


In the Elysian Fields

by TomiStaccato



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-16 07:07:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 49,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/859289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TomiStaccato/pseuds/TomiStaccato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The gods are powerful, vengeful, beautiful, and hateful, and the blind seer has ordained it my destiny to be sacrificed to the most terrifying of all, the god of the dead. AU A retelling of the Persephone-Hades myth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted from ffnet. Inspired by HGRomance's prompt. Banner by Ro Nordmann.
> 
> This story is an adaptation of the Persephone-Hades myth. Although I will be drawing heavily from mythology, I will also be deviating from it on some points in order to adapt it into the Hunger Games world.
> 
> I owe endless gratitude to my betas HGRomance and Katnissinme.
> 
> Happy reading!

" _Ah, but what can we take along_

_into that other realm? Not the art of looking,_

_which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing._

_The sufferings, then. And, above all, the heaviness,_

_and the long experience of love,_ _—_ _just what is wholly unsayable."_

_\- The Ninth Elegy, Rainer Maria Rilke_

I waited and waited until I can go back.

The passing of the days, the hours, the minutes, and the seconds, until the infinitesimal element that brought us from past to present and present to future, passes through my body and tells me I can see him again, was my only guide.

But until that moment, I was here in the mortal realm, above where I yearn to be, where I am dead until I can live again, until I can breathe him in, until his touch sparked the life back into my eyes.

I laid in the meadow behind our home. The tall grasses concealed me in the ground and the sun offered no warmth to my cold skin. My sister called to me for our midday meal but I did not heed her. My tongue longed for the sweetness of ambrosia and not the sustenance of mortals.

I heard her footfalls, as her feet bended the stalks and her dress sailed through the tips. She approached me, apprehensive of what she would find. Once she had found me only staring at the crashing sea beyond the cliffs where our home was perched. Once she had also found me lying in the grass, looking at the bluest sky until the sun blinded me of its light. And once she had found me, crying and pouring my grief into the wind, praying that it carried my lament to him, to where I cannot be. And she had learned to let me, let me until I came back to her as well.

I had forgotten, in the throes of my despair, that the Fates had decreed me a daughter of two worlds, two irreconcilable worlds and I was the only one able to walk both. I had not chosen where I had been borne, nor could the gods choose where they ruled. It was the cruel fate that escaped our grasps.

My sister sat beside me. On a good day, I would hum. And she would sing with me the lullabies that sailed with us to our dreams. And I would smile at the memories that danced in my mind with each note. If I was happy, I would let her lead me back to the house, through the aged and cracked wooden door, down the white stone walls, and into the dining place where a simple meal greeted us and a hearth burned by. I would sit down and eat. She would sit in front of me and she would tell me her day, out in the field that turned her soft hands to leather, or in the market where she sold the remedies passed onto her by mother. And I would listen. For a few glorious moments my despondency would be forgotten as my sister's voice fought its slithering tendrils in my mind. But when her tale ended, my gloom would begin once more. I would stand up, thank her softly for the meal she had prepared, and go back out the salt-aged door and into the meadow once more. Sometimes the wind drowned her soft cries, sometimes I heard them and they pulled at my heart. But my strength was inadequate today and I stayed in my meadow.

In the evening, I went back to bed and dreamt.

Perhaps he would visit whilst I slumber, or my mind would summon him for me so we can dance again, laugh again in the Elysian Fields.

But until then, I waited and waited until I can go back.


	2. Chapter 2

I remembered most the assault of sulfur on my nose, that same scent I had gotten from cracking a rotten egg once, the black yoke slipping, breaking, slimy between my fingers. It was the smell of decay, of death. The cloudy fumes surrounded us as we ascended the slopes of the volcano. The ground was black and dusty and it soiled the hem of my linen frock, the same one my grandmother mended with love so many times. My hair was still in the same braid my mother fixed. My sandals had a tear from a sharp rock I didn't see. The sky above was a thick blanket of cotton. I looked up at it and at the peak of the volcano. There, at its summit where there were larger craters releasing more fumes and one can look down at its fiery depths, was the temple where the sacrifice to the god of the dead will be made.

I had fourteen years of life and had been chosen to accompany the maiden to be sacrificed.

Earlier that day, on the ship with the black sails, with the spray of the sea around us as the rowers worked with haste to deliver her to her death, our city getting smaller in the distance as the ship plowed through the cerulean sea, I asked the maiden, Iphigenia, questions about her life. I did not know what moved me to do it. Perhaps it was pity, perhaps curiosity, or perhaps I ached for companionship too. We were the only females on the ship. Everyone else was the priests, the rowers, the soldiers, and the city officials. She was thin and sweating in the permeating heat, staining her dress in places I was sure mimicked mine. Her dark eyes were framed with lashes as black as the hair that adorned her head. I learned she had three other sisters and a brother who died in the war. She told me she loved to play the lyre in their small courtyard where a poplar tree grew.

She was my age.

We fell asleep leaning on one another and when we were woken, the ship was already docked on an island and the dark volcano loomed in the distance. The smell of sulfur was already present, its faint tendrils dancing in the air. Her hand was cold as she gripped my wrist while we alighted. She turned to me and I saw fear in her eyes. I felt sadness in my chest. I learned fear and sadness were heavy and they pulled me down to the rocky earth as we made our trek in the stone-strewn coastline.

Upon reaching the base of the volcano, they ripped Iphigenia from me and tossed her into a wooden cage, to be carted by a mule as we started our ascent. She held the bars tightly and looked back at me, woeful as the dogs that were in another cage, who were also to be sacrificed along with Iphigenia.

The dirge that accompanied her was a grating wail. It came from the woman servant of the god of the dead who met us at the foot of the volcano.

I never looked away from Iphigenia's eyes. At one point, she cried. Then her sobs whittled to soft gasps. I read the emotions I knew off her face, like fear, anger, and resentment. When we reached the top, her eyes held dread. I felt dread once, when I fell from a lighthouse one hot afternoon, my plummeting stomach held back the scream and the rush of wind scathed my skin before the ground met my head with the equal force of my fall. I woke up hours later in the dark and went home, unbelieving in my luck. I did not even call for the gods.

I wonder which gods Iphigenia implored now.

We reached the temple, graying and in ruins, but we did not go inside. We proceeded to the side to go to its back. There, a gaping hole emitted more of the awful fumes. It grew hotter as we neared the cleft. The black soil around us was littered with green lumps. They made me step back and watch the ritual near one of the temple's columns. I walked with heavy steps and passed Iphigenia's cage. The dogs were howling.

The priests, feverish in their morbid anticipation, took their positions around the hole. The woman servant approached the hole and inhaled deeply, her humming getting louder and her eyes growing unfocused and mad as the fumes took over her senses. The priests chanted a prayer as the woman continued to inhale the fumes.

The ritual slaughter began.

I saw Iphigenia's cage being carried by soldiers and placed down near the mouth of the hole.

Then the woman servant screeched.

Crazed, she opened the cage that held the dogs and with her hand tried to get one out. The poor creatures stepped back but she was able to get her claws on a small, skinny, white one, its tail tucked between its legs. She held it by its neck and hind and threw it unceremoniously into the hole. She screamed again. She threw her head back and her arms up as she chanted along with the priests.

I felt sick, felt my morning meal climbing back up my throat as the pitiful howl of the dog descended into the volcano's mouth. I dreaded what would happen to the girl I accompanied. She knelt in her cage, a wilted flower drained of its essence.

I closed my eyes and wished I was back in my bed, with my mother stroking my hair until I fell asleep, until these horrible images detached themselves from my mind.

When I opened my eyes, her cage was being opened and four priests dragged her out. They ripped her dress until she was bare as the day she entered this world. They bound her hands and feet tightly and pushed her to lie prone on the ground.

They started to chant again and the wild woman uttered a prayer in a guttural cry. She took out a knife, knelt down in front of Iphigenia, turned her over, and pierced her heart. Iphigenia lurched from the force. The priests lifted her writhing body and threw her into the volcano, but unlike the dog, Iphigenia did not scream.

For years, Iphigenia plagued my dreams. Sometimes I remembered everything. Other times some details were missing. I remembered all of this because today was the reaping for the ritual slaughter once more.

It was the fruit of our defeat to the city that worshiped the god of the dead. The war started when my parents were children and ended when they had passed to adulthood. Our enemy, in their desperate hope for victory, turned to the sacrifice of their maidens to the god of the dead to ensure their triumph. When the war ended, it was our city's maidens that were sacrificed to maintain the favor of the dark god.

Other defeated cities suffered the cruelty of the city that bested them. In one distant city, seven boy tributes and seven girl tributes were offered every year to the labyrinth where the Minotaur, the beastly progeny of their enemy's queen and a white bull that sprang from the sea, devoured the hapless children. Their enemy worshipped the god of the sea and the bull came from his territory's depths.

The war had impoverished our once splendid city. Before the war, it was the envy of other city-states, nested in the gorge between majestic and steep mountains. The city rose from the ground and into the peak, where our shining temple to the goddess of the hunt and the wilderness was built. The markets and the city edifices lined the way up into the temple. Our city was impenetrable to our marching enemies, the only way in being the lips of the gorge that were facing out into the sea. But that was where our enemies laid their siege on us after the storm that decimated our fleet of ships.

As a sign of their dominance over us, and as appeasement to the god that aided their victory, they erected a golden statue of him, his feet straddling the two mountains by our city's entrance. The colossal statue of the god of the dead, crowned with his helm and a scepter on one hand, faced out into the sea and forever casted a shadow unto our city. We would always be reminded of our downfall and the price we continued to pay apart from the spilt blood of our warriors.

And I hated it all.

I was standing at the cliff where my house stood, the sky having just been greeted by the sun, and I can see the golden statue to the west perfectly. The ship with the black sails lay waiting to escort its next victim.

Since that day I saw the priests rip a young girl's dignity apart, I abhorred what they did to us and bemoaned our fate and what could have been if our soldiers were not defeated, if our city was not ransacked and our women were not raped, and if our gold and wheat were not divided and distributed to our enemies.

And I mourned my dreams.

The world turned darker the day after I witnessed the sacrifice. I knew now what other people were capable of doing, the depths of their cruelty, and how far they would go to turn death from themselves. I never had any pleasant dreams after that. It was either an absence, a blackened nothingness, or the scenes from the sacrifice where I would wake gasping for air and sweating coldly despite the heat.

The sacrifice stripped me of the sense of wonder that children felt towards the world and replaced it with weariness. Whenever my family would offer their prayers to the temple, when I see their bowed heads, I would think nothing and pray for nothing. I held contempt for the other temple goers as well. I wanted to shout at them that their prayers were meaningless if the gods had chosen that it was now the time their hearts were split over the fuming crater of a volcano. When I see my mother and sister and father fervently praying I feel alienated because I did not share their faith any longer.

It was another rift between my family and I.

I was born a year after the war ended and I was born different from them. My hair was dark, unlike the honeyed tones of my parents, and when my blonde sister came out, the dissimilarities only became more pronounced. My parents sat me down to discuss it when I had seven years of life. But it was only now that I was beginning to comprehend more fully. While I was my mother's daughter, I was not my father's progeny. But he loved me all the same, cherished me as much as my sister, and taught me to help in his pottery shop. I may never paint as well as him but I helped where I could, in setting the kiln with my mother and cleansing the clay of its impurities before my father molded it into shape and painted our stories of the gods unto its sloping sides.

Sometimes, I tried to imagine who my other father was. At moments of despair I sink into the realization that perhaps my mother was one of the unfortunate women the soldiers sought comfort in when they ransacked our city. Then I would not get sleep when I tried to picture my mother's anguish. I would feel dejected when I woke up and only my sister's laugh would dispel the heaviness I felt.

The sharp wind brought me back from my musings and I saw again the ship with black sails. The ground was warm beneath my bare feet.

My mother called me. I went inside our stone house and saw my family all near the dead hearth. My mother told me she needed a few things from the market and if I could please fetch it for her. She was nervous, just like my father who had perhaps painted in his disquiet enough pottery to sell for the year. The upcoming reaping always inspired these feelings in them, even more when my sister's crimson flower bloomed and she became eligible as a maiden to be sacrificed. Until our husbands saved us, we would be one of the many lined up on the steps of the temple as we took our turns throwing the sacred dust into the sacred fire to see if the flames would roar blue, signaling the choice of the god.

"Give this to the priest at the temple," my father said, handing me a small vase with intricate gold paintings.

I knew it could fetch handfuls of silver drachmas. But I also knew it was an offering of my father for our safety from the reaping. I wanted to tell him he was wasting his efforts, that he was only enriching the priests who were already gorged in riches from the city dwellers's offerings. I held my tongue though. I did not want to deny my father his peace of mind.

Before going out the thick wooden door, I strapped my sandals, adjusted my belt, and kissed the top of my sister's head. It was her second reaping and the nervousness had yet to fade.

I descended the slope of the cliff carefully, the woods near our home was behind my back. There had been times when my eyes wandered and my feet stepped on the wrong stone and I almost fell into the Aegean.

Below, the sand on the coastline was damp. I raised the hem of my chiton so the sea foam would not reach it. With the cliffs to my left, the sea to my right, and the golden statue up ahead, I made my way to our city. I met a few farmers with their harvest, shepherds with their goats, and fishermen with their torn nets along the way. They dwelled outside the city like my family, too dispirited by the war to ever return to its center.

I saw the ship again as I neared our city's entrance and I felt a leap in my stomach. It looked the same, wood worn out by the sea, paint chipped in places, mended oars, and that unmistakable black sail. I held my father's vase tighter to my waist.

I entered the city and I can already see the mass of people making their way into the temple.

The din of the market around added to the morning's song. I saw the soldiers from our enemy's army scattered around the city for the ceremony later. The main road felt narrow today and people came at me from all sides as I walked. A vendor of oils shouted at my left while a sheep tender nudged me at my right. Little boys with their soiled tunics raced ahead.

I bought what my mother asked before going to the temple. The vendor eyes the vase I held beadily, perhaps wondering what he could barter for it.

When I neared the temple, the telltale wails of the priests greeted me and the wall of people thickened. I may have stepped on a foot or two but my feet were battered as well. I slowly made my way to the side and I leaned to rest against one of the temple's massive columns to catch my breath before going inside.

It was dark as I passed the doors and into the heart of the temple. The interiors provided a cooler air. Ahead, the statue of our city's patron, the goddess of the hunt and wilderness, stood proud with her golden bow and arrow and accompanied by her faithful hunting dogs. The altar was already brimming with the offerings. The fires from the sides provided the light that made the gold offerings shine. The line was slow, the people were impatient, and the smoke added to the annoyance. When it was finally my turn, I knelt and gave my offering to the old priest and exited on the door to the side, thankful for the fresh air.

It was a welcome change from the stifling temple. The view from here was the barren top of the mountain. Despite the dust, a few trees and shrubs could be seen. Beyond it, down its slopes I was told, were the farmlands.

The murmurs in the temple were behind me. The squeal from the animal sacrifices done at another part of the temple also reached me.

Then a hand touched my arm and I recoiled.

The stooping figure of the blind seer met me.

Our city rarely saw him, often preferring the seclusion of the temple. But he was now with me and I can see his leathery face stripped of the vigor of his youth and his milky eyes stripped of sight by the goddess of wisdom. The tale was that he saw the goddess while she bathed so she punished him. But the god of the sky, the supreme deity, took pity and gifted him with foresight instead. His curved staff was white and it stood higher than him.

I was surprised. And afraid.

But he spoke in such a low tone that I had to lower my head near his mouth.

"Child of two worlds, you have come. I have seen you."

I remained still, unknowing if he had the right girl. What did he mean by child of two worlds?

Then he gripped my forearm, his strength surprising despite his age.

"I have a message from the Fates, child. Your destiny has arrived."

I did not like where this was going.

"The god of the dead, host of the many, shall welcome you before the sun has set."

I felt dread so sharp it carved my insides.

Then he slowly took his leave, back to the sanctuary of the inner temple.

I had no sanctuary to hide in.

* * *

I reposed myself in the woods near my home after my hurried escape from the temple and the city. I did not care how many people tumbled as I ran down the steps, past the market, past the city entrance, past that damned ship, and into the wet sand once more.

In my shock, I was mistaken. This was my sanctuary, ever since my days as child where I played here and the animals also came to play. Here in the woods, the warm grass was my bed and the sun twinkled through the leaves. It was at least peaceful here. My worn sandals were behind my head.

I can mull over the seer's words all morning but the meaning would still be the same. I will be chosen later, at the height of the sun's reign in the day. The sacred fire will burn blue after I throw the sacred dust in.

I felt cold and alone and angry.

I had too few years to my life to have contemplated death. I remember my dead grandmother's words and I pulled them from a memory. She once sang to me about a hero's tragedy before I slept. I asked her if the hero feared death. She said no, because the hero accepted his fate that his glory was tied to his death. She told me that as mortals, we were all born so that one day we may die. We all rushed towards our death through life the moment our mothers pushed us forth, wailing, crying, and gasping from their wombs. I was too young then to understand it but I still did not accept it now.

I thought of my life, my muddy memories from my earliest years, the moment my sister was born, the scented oils of my mother that I breathed in when I rested my head on her neck, the way clay caked under my father's nails.

A tear fell from my burning eye.

This was all my life would be, my memories, the joy I felt in the woods as I played with the animals here, my family's love, the sea that crashed into the shore beneath our home.

As another tear fell, my resentment towards my fate grew. I thought of the gods, these mighty beings we worship, and how they must feel. I wondered if they cared at all about the mortals that revered them. I thought of the city that defeated us and forced us into this ritual slaughter so that they may continue to reap the graces of their deity. I thought of the other maidens, of Iphigenia, who died alone in the agony of a pierced heart and a livid volcano.

I thought of what the seer called me.

Child of two worlds.

But there were only two worlds, that of the mortals and the eternal beings.

I thought back to that time when my parents sat me down and told me they loved me despite my difference. I thought of the time I fell from the lighthouse and did not die. I thought of the stories from the alleys in the city, when a maiden would suddenly be with child despite the absence of a husband. I thought of one of my father's paintings in his pottery, about that beautiful boy who was taken by the god of the sky to be his cupbearer. I thought of the heroes in our legends who were so powerful they could not have been the sons of two lowly mortals.

I looked at my skin. It looked like my mother's, my sister's, and my father's. I did not feel stronger than the other maidens my age. I could not leap far. I almost drowned once.

But before I could think more, the horns had been blown.

It was time.

* * *

I was so absorbed in my reflections in the woods that I forgot to leave enough time for my goodbyes to my family. But even if I did, I would not know what to tell them. Perhaps it would be easier for them to deal with the shock than with a revelation beforehand. It was that reasoning that comforted me as we walked in silence towards the city.

My father's hand was on my shoulder. I looked at him, standing tall, eclipsing the sun from where I walked. I will miss the steadiness his presence always provided.

I looked at my mother and my sister ahead of me, hands held as they walked, feet leaving a trail of prints my father and I walked on.

I looked back to our home. It was tiny atop the cliff. I would not feel the warmth of its hearth when the winter comes. I thought of the woods at its back and all the animals I played with as a child.

I looked at the footprints we left in the sand. Some were already washed away by the waves. Soon my life will be washed away by the tides of time too, forgotten by the world after my family had passed.

We walked under the golden statue and trekked uphill to the temple. The presence of the soldiers assured a more orderly crowd than the one I squeezed through this morning.

The farther we walked, the less I heard, and I was more aware of my being, where my hands fell and how my feet felt against my rough sandals. I did not hear the voices around me, the calls of the vendors, the cries of the children. Only the hand of my father kept my knees from folding.

We reached the temple edge all too soon, where the enclosure for the maidens was located. The sacred fire was burning in the middle of the steps and the priests were all lined at the top. Near the fire, the giant vase held the sacred dust.

My sister clutched my mother fervently. I turned to my father and he wrapped me in his arms. A sob was escaping my lips and he soothed me by hugging me tighter.

"It will be alright, Katniss," he said.

"I traded three vases for a lamb for our feast tonight." He knew how much I liked the taste of lamb but we could only have it for very special occasions.

I smiled in thanks and he nipped my chin in affection. I realized I would never see my father again. My chest constricted painfully.

I turned to my mother and all I could see was the woman who comforted me when my nightmares came, the woman who braided my hair when there were city festivals, and the woman who soothed our scrapes with her own healing concoctions.

My tears fell and I could not breathe properly.

"There now Katniss. It will be alright, sweetheart." My sobs grew louder as my mother embraced me protectively. My sister looked at me oddly. I never cried during the reaping before. I was always indifferent, always waiting for it to end so we can go home.

My mother kissed the top of my head as another horn blew, signaling the start of the maidens's procession up to the temple's interior. We would all be blessed inside before we went back to the enclosure to start the pilgrimage up the stairs. One by one we would stop by the vase, scoop out the cold powder within, and throw it to the fire along with our fervent hope that it would not burn blue. The families watched from behind the enclosure, terse and praying.

The blessing passed by and I did not hear the priest's words. My sister nudged me out of my stupor as we made our way back out.

We were enclosed like animals waiting to be slaughtered. The eldest would go first and end with the youngest. If no maiden was chosen, the process would repeat.

Another horn blew. The priests began their chants and the drums began to pound.

But my heart pounded louder against my chest. I was near the front, us unlucky elder ones who had not yet wed. It was another reason many of our women wed young. I did not have any suitors and my family was of no prominence to the city, much like the elder maidens who walked in front and behind me.

When I went out the enclosure, I looked back and searched for my sister. She looked pale. I felt terrible for not comforting her, angry at the preoccupation my selfish thoughts summoned. It saddened me more that I would not get to see her grow up, beautiful like our mother and strong-willed like our father.

I took the first step up. The eldest maiden already threw the first handful of dust into the fire with trembling hands. It burned red.

In a fit of mad thought, I wanted to shout at them that they were all wasting their time and grief, that it would be me that would be chosen. Instead, I stepped forward, up the steps, slowly, until it was my turn.

I felt more aware than I had ever been, of my heartbeats, my intake of air, of how hot the sun was on my head, of the bird that flew overhead, of how bright the light that glinted off the god's golden statue was.

In that final moment before my hand scooped the cool dust, I accepted what had to be done, what had to happen. My mind quieted. My hand stilled. My eyes waited for the fire's turning color.

I gathered a handful of the powder and threw it to the fire.

I waited for the sigh of relief from the crowd, for the jubilant cries of the priests, and for the changing of the drums's beats.

But the fire did not change its color.

I felt weak, drained, and bewildered.

Can seers be mistaken?

I took a careful step down as the maiden after me reached inside the vase.

Yes, perhaps the old prune was mistaken. Perhaps the gods withdrew their gift from him and he mistook me for someone else.

I was elated as I took another step downward. I looked at the circle we maidens had formed around the fire, slowly progressing through the ritual. The day seemed less heavy, the heat more forgiving, and the air a tad cooler.

When I looked up towards the fire again, it was my sister's turn to throw the sacred dust.

And my heart stopped when the fire turned blue.

* * *

When I fell from that lighthouse, my first thought was not of my life's end. I saw my sister's face first, my dear, sweet sister who cried when I cried and followed me around, imitating everything I did. I saw the moments where we ate together, bathed together in the pond in the woods during summer, resisted sleep together with giggles and stories from our day. We watched the stars take their place in the sky after our evening meal. We sang songs with our parents when we cleaned the house.

All those moments flashed in my head as I saw the color drain from my sister's lips. I saw the priests dart from their position, poised to grasp my sister's frail arms and drag her to the waiting ship with black sails. The wind caused the fire to burn higher and for a moment, I did not see her.

When I saw her again after the blue flames quieted down, I saw not my sister but the face of the girl I accompanied to her death in that black volcano.

And everything was clear now.

The seer was not mistaken.

The acceptance I felt at that moment was different front the one I felt in front of the fire earlier. I knew for certain, as the seer foretold, that my destiny had arrived.

I screamed the loudest I had ever done, willed the wind to carry the pain in my voice, and I shouted,

"No!"

I ran up the steps, breaking the line. I stood in front of my sister, shielding her from the priests. The fire heated one side of my face.

I felt wild with despair and crazed like that woman servant in the volcano. The fumes of my acceptance fueled me.

I shrieked at the nearest priest as I gripped my sister's wrist tighter.

"I volunteer! I volunteer as sacrifice!"

I turned my head to look for my parents in the sea of people, but I only saw the ship with black sails in the distance, under the towering statue of the god I will be sacrificed to. I will soon feel the spray of the sea on its wet deck.

The sulfur will assault my senses again.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greek Mythology Notes:  
> \- The Elysian Fields, in Greek Mythology, is the place of blessedness in the Underworld, separate from Tartarus where the wicked go.  
> \- Ambrosia is the drink of the gods, or that which they ingest to make them godlier. Some sources say it's a food, some sources say it's a drink. In my fan fic, it'll be a drink.  
> \- According to mythology, the Minotaur was the son of King Minos's wife, Pasiphae, and a white bull that Poseidon sent. The king's architect, Daedalus, built a hollow cow where the queen could go in so she can mate with the bull.


	3. Chapter 3

The last words my grandmother told me, the night before she passed from this world to the next, on her aged cot that smelled of the bodily fluids she could not control, was to never expect too much of one's future. We would never know where it would bring us and to expect good fortune to embrace us and be faithful to our hopes would be like walking upstream on a bed of angled rocks with the furious undercurrent making every step perilous.

Then what are the gods for, I asked, if not to bless us with good fortune?

My grandmother smiled at me and it was the last time I would see her crinkly cheeks reach up to her eyes. She told me that if fortune flew with caprice, more so were the gods's whims and we had to be even more careful. The only safe anchor of our fate lay in our hands. She said that we were all alone, truly. We faced death and passed from this life alone. All our hopes and prayers were but a cloak we had to shed before life drained from us and the boatman received our souls.

I never expected to be bestowed with riches and fair fortune. And I also never felt more alone in my last moments.

As I stood there on the temple's steps, watching the fire return to its true color, clutching my crying, bewildered sister behind my back, my throat hurting from my desperate cries, I realized it was even more painful to be so acutely aware of how many more breaths I had to take. One danced through life blissfully unmindful of one's end, for no one lived with one's death in mind. But to be faced with my life's end before I even bloomed in all the happiness it can offer was cruel.

I closed my eyes and reminded myself that I did this for my sister, so that she may live and not suffer the brunt of a life cut too short.

And then my tears fell, slowly, like soft petals down the curve of my face.

I saw one of the priests, the oldest one, move forward and I fixed my sight on him. I grasped my sister tighter and tried to move her away from this man's view.

The crowd had been hushed into an entrancement.

There had never been a volunteer.

The priest took another step and held out a hand. I gave him mine and he pulled me forward, away from my sister. She let out a cry but I clasped her hand again to pull her to me.

Then the priest took a knife and slowly pierced my palm with its cold tip. The blood peeked out shyly then slowly trickled into a line as crooked as the one I painted on a broken vase when I first tried. The priest let the knife receive more of my blood before flicking it into the fire.

It burned blue again, and they took this as a sign of acceptance.

My sister screamed her anguish.

Before I could turn to comfort her, the priest led both of us up the stairs and then inside the temple where more priests awaited. The cool air inside awakened my sweating skin.

There was a table ahead with sheets of papyrus. The old priest led us there for the record keeping. He instructed another man to write his thoughts but I did not hear them until he turned to address me.

"Your name, child?"

"Katniss, daughter of Tycho." I was surprised at how clear my voice sounded.

"And you, child?" he asked my sister.

"Primenia, daughter of Tycho," my sister whispered sorrowfully.

I saw a wash of sadness pass by the old priest's eye. Perhaps they were not all heartless.

He beckoned us to move closer to the table so that we may press our forefinger with blood atop our names. I saw my sister wince when they pierced her delicate skin. I placed my arm around her shoulder. This would be the last time I comfort her.

We headed out towards the door after the signing and the crowd had not stirred. The drums had stopped. The other priests and soldiers and city officials had organized themselves already. My procession waited for me.

The old priest escorted me and the others pried Prim away from my side. My last memory of her would be her hunched form and her teary face. Past her, near the very edge of the temple's side, by a smooth column, stood the seer who foretold all this.

We walked down the steps, the other maidens already dispersed, and I was only aware of the priest's old hand holding my arm as we moved towards the main road flanked by citizens. The reactions they gave me reminded me of a time in my childhood. There was a boy then who smelled unpleasantly and the other children avoided him or looked at him with contempt. I saw those same reactions now. Perhaps they hated me for being different, or because I was the mirror that made them see that they had been so horrible to let their daughters die alone without so much as a dissenting cry.

I searched the unfamiliar faces for my parents. I heard my mother's loud lament and shifted my sight towards the sound. I found them, my mother in my father's arms, shaking like a flower on a stormy night. My father steadied her and I looked at him. I drew strength from his unwavering gaze and told him my fears through my eyes.

As we marched farther, the crowd lessened and the weight of the air became lighter. I saw the vendors and their stalls in the agora. I saw the one that sold my mother's perfumed oils in their tiny jars and remembered the time when I would pull my mother away so we could go to the one selling the colorful masks. I saw the vendor my father eagerly traded his vases with and that one time I ran into the vendor and he almost dropped his commodity. I saw all of my little selves in different ages as we passed and each stall I recognized added to the heavy weight in my chest.

We were soon on the rocky shore and the smell of salt was more pronounced. I looked at my feet as I walked, not wanting to look up to the vessel that would tear me away from my home.

But I remembered my grandmother's words, how my fate lay in my hands. And right then I chose the lonely road of bravery.

The ship with the black sails greeted me as I looked up and I choked back a cry.

* * *

The sun was at its most vicious position and I felt the top of my head grow hot. There was only the calming sea on my left, the jagged coastline to my right, and the grunts of the men as they rowed. Our city had faded from my view long ago. The wound on my palm ached.

I sat on the deck with the maiden, Amynta, who would accompany me, who I was sure would never have the same dreams at night again after she witnesses my death, just as it had done to me years ago.

She was much younger than me, slight, and with skin that had been touched by the sun. Some of the sea spray dewed her face. Her hunched shoulders reminded me of my sister at the temple.

I spoke to her, just as I had spoken to Iphigenia before, and asked her about her life. Her father was a fisherman, so she was accustomed to a life in the sea. She had one younger brother and a mother who bled to her end upon bringing her last child unto the world. I felt sorrow for this girl who had never felt the tenderness of a mother's love.

Amynta had a frayed ribbon tied to her wrist. I asked her if she wanted to have her hair braided, like mine, and we could tie her hair with the ribbon she had. I had caught her looking at my hair a few times during our conversation. She nodded shyly and I asked her to sit in front of me.

I combed her hair, which reminded me so much of my sister's, with my trembling fingers. Every second that passed brought me closer to the black volcano.

Then I slowly remembered how my mother gently took sections of my sister's hair and weaved it with her own touch of beauty. I did the same with Amynta's hair, but my work was not as refined as my mother. But still, it reminded me of how Prim first touched her braided hair, her eyes always shining in amazement. It was the same look Amynta had now as she turned back to me, hand reaching up to the braided crown on her head. I made it different from my simpler one that rested by my nape. Her chapped lips stretched to reveal her teeth as she smiled and I smiled back.

It faded when I looked over Amynta's shoulder and saw the gloom of the volcano taking shape in the distance.

She noticed my face fall and asked me what's wrong.

"Will you do something for me?" I asked her. She nodded.

"Promise me you will close your eyes later," I cupped her cheek just like I did to Prim when I comforted her when other children threw her callous words.

Amynta knew what I referred to. Her smile regressed into a sad pillow and her eyes lost the happiness it twinkled in earlier.

She nodded again and hugged me. And I knew the small enchantment I had when I relived my memories were over. I felt numb despite my heart thumping loudly. It became hard to breathe as I saw the island grow bigger. The dancing waves and the ship's motions made my head feel light.

Then the ship stopped and docked. I bowed my head and reached for Amynta's hand. She was seated beside me and I turned my head away from the sight of the volcano. My ears began to ring.

After the movement of preparation, of which I hardly heard because of the ringing in my ear, I noticed that we were alone on the ship along with the old priest, who was now walking towards us.

"Child, it is time," he spoke softly as he reached us.

My knees did not respond to my mind's command to stand and the priest had to gently help me. Amynta did not let go of my hand. The priest led me down the plank and into the shore.

I felt that heavy feeling of sadness pulling me down to the earth again.

I looked up and saw no cage for me and no animals to be sacrificed along with me, unlike with Iphigenia.

"No cage? No animals?" I asked the old priest.

He shook his head. "Not today, my child." But I can see with the other priests's sullen expressions that they were unhappy with this change. They lost their savage sport this year. I wondered if my actions were what brought the change but I was relieved I could die with a little dignity.

When the march up the volcano began, Amynta pressed closer to me. The old priest walked ahead of us and to our back were the soldiers.

The lunatic priestess of the god of the dead marched with us, at the front, but she did not wail a dirge this time. She looked shabbier this year.

Everyone was silent and only the footsteps against the dry soil were heard. The faint, familiar smell of decayed eggs permeated the air.

As we walked, I moved parts of my body and forced myself to be aware of it. I never wondered at how quickly my toes could curl the moment I thought of it, or how the short hairs at the base of my neck stood up when the wind passed. I tried to feel what it was like to have a body, to have something of mass that moved with my mind's will. It had been a good companion to me, sturdy and reliable.

We passed a small stream being choked by rocks and I remembered playing in the pond with Prim.

I moved on to think of my memories, all of the moments that made me happy and angry and alive so that I may feel that rush of life once more. I remembered the first painting on a vase I was confident enough to show my father and how he smiled widely at my work. I wished I drew it on the sand when we docked just so I can see it in actuality one more time.

We were halfway to the summit already and I felt numb again. But I willed my mind to think of more memories to fight the resigned coldness threatening to settle in my belly.

I thought of the first time I made Prim cry when I hid her doll. I remembered the first song my mother taught me while she ground the herbs together into a paste for the big wound on my knee. The song soothed out my cries because my mother's voice fascinated me.

I realized, looking out into the sea in its bluest I have ever seen, that it was perhaps more difficult to be aware of when and how one dies as opposed to not knowing at all.

We neared the top and I can already see the temple. Amynta pressed into my hand tighter and I put my arm around her instead to offer comfort.

A morbid strength filled me. I told myself I would go through the final steps of my life and not think of that one moment where everything goes black. At least that was how I thought death would be, a sudden emptiness.

There was that odd moment one passed through as we went from the time when the moment we dread had yet to pass and then the moment when it presented itself. Once my foot stepped onto the flattened peak of the volcano, when the sulfur assaulted my senses again with such fury, I was in my moment of dread and everything gravitated to that singularity I could not escape from. I felt the heat from the gaping hole but my insides were icy. I moved like I pulled great slabs of marble behind me. My tongue felt dry; a poor, beached sea creature in my mouth.

I saw the priestess walk toward me. She held in her hands the rough rope that would bind mine. The decaying temple was on our right and I saw the way to the back where the crater stood, the same path I walked before.

I took my arm from Amynta's shoulder and I heard her sniffle. I looked only at her as the priestess wound the rope around my wrist.

"Remember what you promised," I whispered to Amynta as the rope chafed my skin.

When it was complete the priestess dragged me from the other end of the rope, like one would do to an animal. They had not forgotten how to disgrace a person during the last moments of her life. The other priests followed us and I looked one more time to Amynta, who was now standing by the temple where I once stood to witness Iphigenia's death. The old priest was beside her.

I was halfway between the temple's columns and the crater. The priestess and the other priests stood near its edge, chanting and praying.

My ritual slaughter was beginning.

I willed my ears not to hear their chants but my mother's lullabies instead.

The heat was unbearable but I told my skin to remember how soft my first silken chiton was as it glided down from my shoulders.

I saw the people praying for my death and I tricked my eyes into seeing my family again, my father's proud stance, my mother's kind face, and my sister's spritely figure.

I bowed my head and allowed myself one moment of grief as I closed my eyes.

Then the earth shook so violently that I found myself suddenly lying on my back, eyes whipping open as a sharp rock became my pillow, ears splitting from the screams of agony that sounded farther and farther by the second, much like the dog's howl before as it descended into the volcano.

I felt something warm behind my head and when I drew my hand back from reaching it, I saw blood.

The earth had not stopped shaking in anger and I felt a blackness pull me.

* * *

The delicate dandelion seeds of the Asphodel Meadows had begun their sweep of the realm, he noticed from looking out from one of the many doors that lined the cavernous adamantine hall of his palace.

The white dandelion seeds floated in the meadow, swayed without care, and dropped themselves anywhere the wind stopped carrying their spindly beings. Far beyond into the horizon, he saw, stood the mountain ridges that bore the road to the dark mountain, where the pit of Tartarus resided in its underbelly.

He was about to step into the frame to go out into the meadow when the whisper of a shadow hissed to his right, and he faced the vapors that materialized into one of the Erinyes, informing him, god of the dead and host of the many, that the council for the souls's judgment was ready to convene.

The shadow dismantled itself once more and he was left alone, standing by the door that led to the dandelion rain of Asphodel. Perhaps he would go in another time, when his duties had been attended to.

He turned and walked towards another door, a hundred steps from the Asphodel door, one of many that lined the endless hall whose doors led to endless realms, to wherever he pleased. He stopped by the Trivium door, where the council assigned the dwelling of the souls the boatman brought.

He saw a long line now, for another battle had just ended and the slain ones needed to be separated.

The white flames, which burned without end, lined the Trivium hall's walls and responded to his presence. They flared to announce his arrival and settled to an imposing height, frightening the new dwellers of the underworld.

He sat on his adamantine throne, high behind the seats of his three councilmen.

He remained silent as the middle councilman stood and recited the proclamation agreed upon by him and his brother, god of the sky, the supreme deity.

"For thou have passed on from the living and thou shall be judged by thy actions. If thou have part from a just and blessed life, thou shall dwell in all happiness apart from ill in the Elysian Fields. If thou have lived an unjust and wicked life, the god of the dead, host of the many, shall mete out thy penance in the pit of Tartarus. If thou have lived in neutrality, the Asphodel Meadows await thy soul."

Then the judgment began.

Alone, a soul would step into the blue flame before the councilmen. The flame would recount all his actions and misdeeds so the council may make a fair decision.

He had seen before how the souls looked at him, regarded him in both awe and fear, not any different from how they viewed him while they were in the mortal realm.

Through the separation of souls he had come to know all the colors of humankind: the depths of their depravity, their hushed desire for riches, the unending prayers to thwart their demise, as well as their tender wishes for those they hold dear, the unconditional kindness abundant in children, and the gratitude of some who remember whence their fortune flowed.

Once the humans were born, they learned to love, learned to sin, learned to implore and worship the gods they needed assistance from and give a token in return. Nothing went unpaid. He and his brothers divided the realms of the sky, the sea, and the underworld and the other deities divided the other duties that needed to be done. This was the delicate order of the world as ordained by fate.

So when the souls had been divided, the wicked had pleaded, the neutral ones had sighed their relief, the blessed had murmured more prayers, the councilmen took their leave and he was once more alone, it was time to watch the sacrifice offered to him.

Mortals seldom worshipped him. Many preferred not to acknowledge the presence of his necessity to the world. Indeed, many abhorred yet feared all that he stood for. Men clung to their lives and their borrowed power and would sooner send their brother to the boatman than part with their earthly lives.

The blue flame where the souls stepped earlier now roared higher and wider that it claimed the space of the hall before him. It showed him the reaping.

Then he saw the mortals.

The maidens were ready. Their city looked on.

He watched the ceremony begin.

He read the familiar fear in their eyes, the tremble of the hands, that telltale miniscule rise of their chest from their furiously beating hearts, and he searched for the most unstained of them.

It was his gift to their souls for them to never know the evils of mortals. It was his gift to send them to the Elysian Fields for being the price that had to be paid to appease the necessity required by fate for the transaction between mortals and deities.

And he had found the girl he would bestow his gift to.

She was young, as they often were, and had a righteous heart. Yes, she would enjoy the eternal beauty of the Elysian Fields.

But there was a commotion after he had chosen.

He heard a piercing cry, and such an anguished one as well. Another maiden had rushed to the side of his anointed one.

She proffered her own life for the other girl. He saw the way this maiden clutched the younger girl frantically behind her as one of the priests advanced.

How odd.

He stood from his throne and walked to the fire.

His head tilted a bit and he felt his eyes squint as he regarded the scene.

This had never been an occurrence, as these mortals preferred to be very miserly when it came to the length of their lives.

It was the most befuddling thing in his existence, for the order of things to be upended. He had considered sending for one of his brothers, the god of the sea, heir of the trident. Perhaps he had had a similar experience with his extensive dealings with mortal women.

And then he felt something different from this girl.

He was about to summon one of the Fates when one of the sisters, the spinner, materialized beside him, and in her wheezing voice spoke.

"What troubles the god of the dead, host of the many, that we should hear his thoughts call to my sisters and I?"

He wasted no second.

"Who is this mortal?"

The spinner regarded the fire with half a smile on her lips.

"Ah yes. She is  _half_  mortal my liege. I spun her with an immortal thread plaited with her mortal one upon coming into being."

"Who bestowed her an immortal thread?"

"The god of the harvest."

He turned to regard the spinner who still had the small smile.

How curious.

Then the spinner spoke again, "This is her fate, my liege. She has chosen. It is the way of the world we cannot escape from," before retreating back to her shadowy home with her other sisters.

He watched the last of the wisps disappear out the door.

The fire in the mortal realm burned blue once more when he made his decision.

He let out a small sigh, such an unfamiliar gesture that he only watched his other brothers do.

He summoned the messenger, the herald of the gods, bid him to take his chariot with the deathless horses to fetch this, this half mortal, so that he may have a better look at her.

* * *

I choked out the first deep breath I inhaled and moved to my side.

The sulfur swam heavily in my chest and I heaved to expel its horrid grasp.

I ran a hand at the back of my head, my mother's braid beginning to ruin, and felt relieved at the absence of the sticky blood. I felt its rough flakes instead.

My legs felt the needles inside, waking it up.

I slowly opened my eyes to see my surroundings lacking the movement of life. Kneeling, I looked around to see the decaying temple to be in even more ruin than before. The columns were scarred with cracks and the grayed marbles tumbled down one another in an ungraceful heap.

I felt unease as I pulled my last moments before the blackness pulled me.

My eyes traveled from the frayed hem of my soiled chiton to the dusty soil to the small hand that peeked out from the temple ruins.

My tears and my feet rushed to her, like water poured from a bucket. I touched the cold hand and gave it a reassurance Amynta would never feel.

Then a whistling sound reached me.

On stormy nights, when it felt like the waves with their unrelenting mass would move the cliff our house stood on, the wind howled in a high-pitched tone and I would not be able to sleep. I would look out the small window where my sister and I shared a bed and watch the black sky convulse with lightning.

It sounded like that now, a furious whistle growing stronger every second.

I stood up and looked around. The ruined temple was behind me and I can see the fumes coming out of the crater.

I feared what would become of me, all alone in the summit of a volcano.

I heard the cry of horses nearing, their loud snorts of air as they summoned their strength. I saw them, four towering, black, beastly horses pulling a fearsome golden chariot, coming from the horizon where the sun sets.

I took a step back as the horses stopped in front of me.

A man emerged from the chariot. He was radiant, and I knew he was unlike me and the others who had just perished. He had a crimson cloak around his shoulders, fastened by a snake brooch. From the straps of his sandals came wings of flame, like the ones that adorned his golden helmet.

As a child, I once saw a play in our city's amphitheater, where the lone actor wore his colorful masks to convey his different characters as he told us his tale. It was the only play that allowed children in the amphitheater's steps and the tale he regaled us with was the most popular one. It was about the gods we worshipped. And the man before me I knew from the stories was the messenger, the herald of the gods.

He took a step toward me and I lay rooted at the dusty soil.

He spoke and his voice was deep,

"I have come at the bidding of the god of the dead, host of the many, to bring you to his realm."

He walked a few more steps and held his hand out for mine.

My tongue felt heavy and I could not respond. As I placed my hand in his I wondered if this was only an illusion conjured by the fumes. But he felt real, and warm, as he guided me to the chariot.

I stood beside him and he took the reigns.

I ran my hand on the golden chariot, the cold sensation informing my mind that this was not an illusion.

Then the horses whinnied and we were on our way towards the horizon where they came from.

I was on my way to the underworld without having died.

But all my anguish at dying was replaced by a new fear, a new dread settling on my belly. I had unanswered questions in my mind.

I looked at the messenger beside me. His eyes were trained forward. I saw the horses's mighty limbs gallop as we moved through the sky. I gathered my courage and willed my voice to be more than a squeak.

"May I speak freely?"

The messenger looked down at me with a piercing stare and curtly nodded.

"What does the god of the dead, host of the many, want with me that I be brought there without having died first?"

His voice was soft when he replied and I could hear it despite the gust of the wind.

"I am not in a position to answer. The god of the dead, host of the many, has kept his reasons to his self."

I tore my eyes away from his chiseled profile after he uttered his unhelpful answer and looked below. The sea was calm and the dying sun had cast its shadow as it sank in the horizon.

I remembered the seer's words, about the god of the dead, host of the many, welcoming me before the sun has set. It seemed as though a long time had passed when it was only this morning that he uttered those words that changed my fate.

I looked down again, to my dirty chiton, my torn sandals, and I felt a change in the air. I was about to look back when I heard a soft reproach from the god beside me to turn my head away from the mortal realm, for it was no more now that we had entered the underworld.

The air heightened each sensation I felt as the wind still flew past me. I looked below and the messenger god told me we were now above the sea of Erebus that separated the mortal and immortal realms.

Then a mountain loomed and I felt the chariot inclining. Past the pinnacle, I looked below and saw the five rivers of the underworld descending in majesty from the peak and snaking through the vast realm. One was fire and the other four glimmered differently from one another. I remembered the masked performer telling his audience about the underworld's rivers of sorrow, lamentation, fire, forgetfulness, and hate.

I shivered. My eyes were still unbelieving.

Up ahead, after the expanse of field, stood more mountains and another ominous one that towered afar. The field below, where we were descending, was separated into two by one of the rivers, the one that glinted like the dew on flowers at daybreak.

The messenger god assisted me as I took the step down from the chariot. Before I could ask another question, he had already returned to the reigns and I was left behind in this field.

My heart beat furiously again as I looked around.

The light enveloped the realm softly, muting the colors of my surroundings. It was not bright here, and the mists bathed the seemingly endless land in an aching charm, but it was unlike the dark portrayals of the poets and their words.

I knew not where to go, so I sat in the rough grass. They bent under my weight. Around me were stalks of pale green where clusters of small, lavender buds drooped to the ground. They were smooth against the tips of my fingers.

I drew my knees in and looked to my right. There loomed the mountain with the five rivers in the distance. But to its front, but still very far away, I saw an imposing structure surrounded by mists. It stood like a temple without the columns at the forefront. It was closed and I saw no dark shapes to indicate windows or doors. It must be the dwelling of the god of the dead.

To my back, when I turned my head, were the woods, but with brittle barks and dry, white leaves that added to the melancholy of the realm. The bushes and shrubs with their shriveled leaves were tremulous in the gentle wind that blew. The field, to my relief, held more colors from the tiny flowers. Their soft reds and violets reminded me of the flowers in the mortal realm.

I bowed my head and as the mists settled around me, I drew my knees closer. I tried to remember my sister's laugh or my father's smile. I painted the way my mother's hair fell down slowly like the rain when she bent to pick me up as a child. Here, in the savage beauty of the underworld, it was too quiet and I had never felt more solitary.

My memories were my only company, and I had never felt more thankful for the ability to remember, even if my heart broke at the harsh truth of not being able to make new ones with my family.

* * *

I knew not how many moments had passed when I felt another being nearing me. I lifted my head.

The mists have cleared.

I craned my neck towards the sound and saw a man coming from the woods.

How strange.

I followed him with my eyes as he neared.

He stopped by my side, and as he sat, I saw the waves in his golden hair move.

He spoke first, for I was too dazed by the day's events to initiate a conversation and too surprised at the sudden addition of another being after being alone.

"You must be new here."

I looked at him. My arms still wrapped my knees.

"Do you live here?" I asked.

"Live? Have you any knowledge where we are?" He asked with a smirk.

That small expression made me realize how starved I had been of an interaction that did not revolve around farewells and my demise.

He had a boyish, gentle face but with probing eyes the shade of the cornflower I used to give my mother when I happened upon it in the woods near my home.

The memory of my mother forced my nose to prickle again and I looked away from this stranger and stared at the field ahead.

"By what name do you go?" He asked curiously.

"Katniss."

I did not ask him his name because I suddenly wanted to be alone in my grief and I wished he would go away.

But he rambled on about the underworld instead.

"Well, Katniss. Welcome! We're in the Elysian Fields, if you would care to know. You are fortunate to have been chosen to be here, rather than be in the Asphodel Meadows or dare I say in dreadful Tartarus."

His leisurely words pierced a sac of anger in me I did not know was full. But perhaps I should not be surprised that it was, after all that happened to me.

"Fortunate?" I asked, rounding on him. I stood up and faced him, this poor man who I've barely even met, was about to be at the receiving end of my temper.

"How am I fortunate? I am not even dead and yet I am here! All thanks to the greedy city that conquered mine and the damned god who wanted maidens to be sacrificed to him and die in the most cruel way!"

He was startled by my outburst and his expression hardened.

"You need to be careful. The god of the dead may hear you and he is not one to be trifled with and your careless words will not be of any good to you."

I let out a bitter laugh as my anger poured out. I was past caring and it was savagely liberating. "What else can he do to me? I am already here. He had already taken me from my family, from what life I had above."

I had a desire to leave this man here and run to the woods to see where it would lead me. I breathed heavily. The anger I carried was heavy. Every emotion I felt today burdened me.

"I hate them," I whispered.

The man looked to me, puzzled.

"I hate them all. The war, the sacrifice, the gods and their demands. Everything."

I felt deflated and I sat beside him again. My tongue pushed the words out of my mouth easily.

"I never prayed to the gods anymore, not even when the seer told me I was going to die."

He was silent and let me talk, and I was thankful because the words would not stop.

"Ever since the time I witnessed a sacrifice and how they defiled that innocent girl to gain the favor of a god, I stopped praying. How could the gods permit such a cruelty? How could I ask them for anything? They demand so much in return when they were already gods and we were just mortals who were chained to their caprice."

I realized, in my rambling, that perhaps this man did not understand the context of my anger or what it was I was even talking about. I ventured to tell him more, now that my outburst was over and since he was my only company. But first, I owed him something.

"I apologize for my behavior."

"Well you are new, and the new ones have still not accepted the final fate handed to them. But what do you mean by not being dead? Again, do you know where we are?" he asked.

I sighed.

"My city's defeat in the wars led to the sacrifice of our maidens to the god of the dead. Earlier today was the ceremony to reap the maiden to be sacrificed, but before that, the seer told me I was going here. Then the reaping proceeded but it was my sister who was chosen. I could not let it be her, so I volunteered. Before I was to be sacrificed the earth shook, I fell, and when I when awoke, the messenger of the gods came for me and brought me here."

He stared at me with those piercing eyes and I looked away to the river ahead.

"Do you not fear death then?"

I turned to him and smiled sadly, "I thought I did, but I did not even consider much of it when I saw my sister get chosen."

"You do not value your life then?"

That stoked the embers left and I rounded on him once again.

"I do! But there are some things that I cannot allow no matter what it may cost me and my sister being murdered for the whim of a god is one of them!"

My angry voice bounced off the dry barks. I closed my eyes to let my anger wash away before I spoke. No, this stranger did not deserve my temper. I tried small talk.

"Have you been here long?"

He nodded, still probing me with his stare. It was uncomfortable and his expression was unreadable.

"Where are the other souls?"

"They are around. The underworld is a vast place," he replied quite curtly. I could not blame the poor man for being brusque, not when my own behavior had been appalling.

I felt tired. The last of my energy was consumed by my vexation.

And then I noticed them.

Cloaked figures in two lines headed towards us from the direction of the mountain and my breath hitched.

"Who are they?" I asked the man.

He turned to look to the right.

"They are the servants of the god of the dead. Perhaps your presence is wanted."

I clutched at the grass and felt the flower petals wither inside my fist.

The cloaked figures were women, their cloak as dark as the night and fastened by a horn-shaped brooch. They had a jeweled mask that covered their mouth and they did not speak upon approaching us.

I looked to the man but before I could ask his name, or thank him and apologize for listening to my tirade, one of the women stood by me and bid me to get up. I had no choice but to obey.

I walked in the field, between the two lines, and I felt drained. I wanted this day to be over.

* * *

 _Insolent girl_ , he thought.

_Foolish, insolent, ignorant girl._

As soon as the line of servants and the girl disappeared from view, he walked back to the woods to another door that led to the adamantine hall he was walking on now.

He had her brought here so he could see her for himself and perhaps satiate his curiosity, but all the girl did was anger him with her sacrilegious words. She was fortunate that he did not have her chained to the gates of Tartarus yet.

He entered one of the doors that led to the empty Trivium and paced by his throne. A goblet of Ambrosia was on the table nearby. He took it and drank deeply, letting the thick, syrupy liquid glide down and nourish his immortality.

Then he hurled the goblet and it clanged loudly against the smooth floor.

How dare that foolish girl accuse him of murdering in caprice? What did she know of the ways of the world, of the necessity ordained by fate? She knew nothing.

He was seething and the flames responded to him, flaring up the walls as anger coursed through him faster than the Ambrosia.

He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. He exhaled deeply and closed his eyes. She was a puzzle to him.

He had extended a kindness to the sacrificed maidens by having them sent to the Elysian Fields and for this slip of a girl to slap back the purpose of the sacrifice to him with contempt was a slight he could not forgive.

The flames where he watched the sacrifice earlier rose again and he saw the ungrateful girl, this Katniss, being cleansed by the servants. He saw her standing sideways, her nubile body bare as the waters glided down from the arch of her neck to the swell of curves on her chest, to the side of her hips, her thighs, then to her trim ankles. She was unaware that his eyes traced her body now.

He felt empowered looking at her, for she may never have consented to be looked at while naked and relished being able to do so because he could. He stepped closer to the fire.

Yes, as a god, he can take what he wanted.

It felt good after being rendered powerless by this girl who did not fear death. Her statements and her thoughts she so brazenly spewed forth unsettled him. She was the first one he encountered who would willingly give her life away. And what dominance did he have over her as the god of the dead if she did not fear that which empowered him and weakened the mortals and allowed them to be subjugated?

He summoned one of the servants and as soon as her shadow formed, ordered that the girl be taken to his room when she finished being cleansed.

He watched the girl as she walked down the steps into the milky bath. His hot fury flowed through him more at the sight of her body.

He thought of his brothers and their dalliances with mortal women. He knew what her punishment for her insolence would be.

* * *

I passed through another door again from this hallway of endless doors.

I would have thought that as a god, the god of the dead would have a grand palace. All I had seen was this massive hall that contained only doors. We entered one from the field. I thought it odd that there was a lavish door by a small pond in the middle of a field. But when we entered, the wall of doors, an abrupt change from the trees and grass, astonished me. There was nothing else. No columns, no other beings, no windows, and only two walls facing one another filled with doors. Soft light, like the one from the field, poured from above.

The servants seemed able to distinguish them from another. Their memory was impressive, and comforting, for I would not want to be lost here.

We walked to our left and entered another unmarked one. There, I was stripped bare.

The cleansing had been unbearably uncomfortable.

What modesty I had swirled with the water that went down my body as the servants cleaned my bare form.

Then I was soaked in this creamy liquid in a very large bath. They left me there for some time before returning with my dress of flowing silk and linen.

When I had been dressed, combed, swathed in perfume, and made to drink this thick, syrupy liquid that energized me, they led me out the door and we began another walk.

They stopped by another door, flanked it with two lines, and waited for me to stand by it.

Then one of them whispered, "The god of the dead, host of the many, shall be with you here."

Then they disintegrated into dark mists before my eyes. I had never seen anything more frightful.

Gathering my courage and sweeping my distress aside, I pushed the door. Silver steps that led up to where I cannot see greeted me. The room was bathed in a soft light, like everything else in this surprising realm.

I took a step. It was cold on my bare feet.

I climbed, gathering my dress in one hand to keep myself from tripping.

At the top, I was breathless. The climb was higher than the one leading to my home from the shore.

My breath hitched when I caught sight of a massive bed. Its iron legs touched the grass in a garden and instead of walls, high, dense shrubs of deep green provided the enclosure.

I wanted to run and turn back but I found the stairs to be gone. Only a wall of leaves faced me.

Then a deep voice strummed the air.

"Move to the bed."

I felt dread again, the one that carved my belly when I heard the grim vision of the seer. I knew what would happen to me. There had been too many stories of unwanted children begotten by women during the sacking of our city.

I walked slowly, each step sending my heart jumping. I wished the bed was farther. I wished for anything that would prolong my walk.

But I reached the edge, and I was shivering.

Then suddenly, my sight was taken from me. I gasped. I only saw the blackness, like the absence in my sleep when I did not dream of Iphigenia.

A coldness crept up from the tips of fingers and spread itself. I did not stop shivering.

I heard the heavy footsteps of someone. It would be the god of the dead, my captor. I did not know why he wanted this from me. Is this what I get for saving my sister and not resisting my destiny?

My sister. My father. My mother. Would their memory of me would be lost in the vastness of their lives.

The footsteps grew louder, nearer.

I tried everything to distract my frantic mind from my sudden loss of sight. I thought of my home, my city, the woods, the sand, and the cliffs.

I had been torn from my home by the overpowering tides of fate and brought here. I had no one to help me in the underworld.

Based on the sound, the god of the dead was near.

I faintly remembered my grandmother's words, how we were all alone, and how true her words were.

I faced the imminence of my death in that volcano alone, and I would face my horrors alone, with only my anguish as my comfort.

Then when he was behind me, when I felt the energy between two bodies that did not touch, when I felt the air he exhaled by my nape, I bid my soul to be torn away from my body when I felt his deft fingers unclasp the brooches on my shoulders that held my dress. I wished that a part of me could pull away, drift away, and find myself anywhere but here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greek Mythology Notes:  
> \- The Greeks created their gods in their image, meaning they had the same temperaments as humans. For example, they quarreled, they wanted prestige, and they pursued the lovers of their philandering husbands with a vengeance. Sounds so familiar.
> 
> \- I had to adjust Prim's name. At least Katniss's, thankfully, was odd enough to be able to fit in with the Callistos, Helens, and Sapphos of Ancient Greece.
> 
> \- Based on the Ancient Greek poets, the underworld has realms where the souls went, just as the story mentioned. The place where the three realms met was the Trivium. It also had five rivers called Acheron (sorrow), Cocytus (lamentation), Phlegethon (fire), Lethe (forgetfulness), and Styx (hate). I took liberties with the geography and the structures.
> 
> \- The Fates, who controlled the thread of mortal life, also made sure that the fate assigned to every being, as dictated by eternal laws, were followed by both men and gods. They were Clotho (the spinner), Lachesis (the apportioner), and Atropos (the inevitable).
> 
> -The Erinyes were known as the Furies in Roman Mythology. They were spirits of vengeance who pursued mortals who wrongly shed blood.


	4. Chapter 4

I closed my eyes that had been robbed of sight by the god of the dead and when I opened them, I was back to my first reaping, the year before I accompanied Iphigenia. I had thirteen years of life then.

No sun shone between the clouds and the rains that had yet to fall caused the air to swell in a moist heat that clung to us. I was restless and nervous as I stood in the line. My position near the end of the procession allowed me to see the faces of all the maidens before me. Some were stout of heart and betrayed no emotion, some would have howled like the wind on a stormy night had it not been for the stern expressions of the priests, and some had no color on their faces. I thought nothing of these but the small feast my father promised me for supper to celebrate not being chosen. It was my parents's way of calming me, of looking to a future clearly envisioned so the present would not be as harrowing.

After taking a few steps up the temple, I saw a small bird hovering nearby, a feeble, young bird testing its wings and learning the craft it was meant to do. I looked at it as the line moved, bade it to fly higher, try harder in my mind. It flapped its black wings with great effort, much like the thumping of my heart as I neared the flames. I distracted myself with the bird and its attempts. It encircled the tips of the fire, sometimes dipping too close, and I saw from my peripheral one of the priests coming forward, perhaps to shoo this bird away from the sacred fire. I willed the bird to soar away, afraid for the harm I was sure the priest would inflict.

When there were but two maidens before my turn came, a gust of wind tore through the temple and hurled the flapping bird into the fire. I stilled. I saw the tips of its wings catch fire first, the flames licking a pattern of feathers. It opened its beak as if in agony, for one fleeting moment. Then the fire melted its body and my turn came.

At that moment, in front of the sacred fire before I threw the dust in, I realized that we lived our lives like a stream flowing relentlessly down a hill, until something changed the course of our lives. The wind reshaped the fate of the bird's life in the midst of its struggle. My act to save my sister brought me here.

There was a fire that traced my body now.

The god of the dead's hands were rough as they pulled the brooches of my dress from my shoulders and they fell with a soft thud, bouncing off my feet. His breath was a feather's icy caress on the slick skin of my bowed neck.

My dress fell, and I wished its descent to be slower, but I was aware of all the places it touched—the sides of my breasts, the slope of my stomach, the thin skin of my inner thighs, my knees, then my feet—leaving me uncovered and at the mercy of the dark god who wanted my body.

My breaths hurled into the air tremulously. My blindness had heightened my other senses and I felt too keenly every shattering moment of my dignity.

I brought my arms to cover my chest, my nakedness, in a desperate attempt to hold myself together. But his strong hands gripped my wrists and brought them roughly to my side.

"It would be a shame to hide those," his deep voice purred from behind.

Then I felt the pads of his fingers slide down from both my shoulders to trace the skin flanking my spine. The air I drew in flowed like knives into my lungs. His touch was slow and torturous, and then his hands finally rested at the dip in my back.

I heard him sigh appreciatively.

I wished for a flame to consume me.

His hands glided around my hip to encircle my waist and they gripped me hard. I was trapped in his possession now.

He pulled my head by my hair to create an unencumbered path for his lips to trace the curve of my neck that was now exposed. One of my breasts filled his cupped hand as he slowly pressed me to him. I felt his hunger and his mouth skimmed my skin like a prize to be savored. The other hand left my hair and pursued an unhurried path from my chest down my stomach. My mouth parted as I blew another breath out.

My body awakened in shame and every fiery sensation evaporated into a cold trail.

This was agony.

Two strong, opposing forces fought in my mind. One stemmed, searing, from a dormant state as it raced from my center, while the other was rooted in the cohesion of my worth as a person. The latter won, just as I felt his fingers dance in my thighs, teasing its way up. I wanted to shrink away from his touch, wilt like a dying flower's petals.

If I could scream, I would, and beg for my deliverance, from being torn by my passions. Was this my punishment for my mother begetting me unwontedly, that I should feel the anguish she felt at her violation? But I would argue with fate that I had not chosen to be born and yet I existed. I did not mean to be my mother's grief.

There was no one here to bear witness to my agony but myself.

And suddenly, like clouds parting for the sun's radiance, I realized the clarity of my strength arising in my heart like a great flood of light. Despite my desecration, the warmth of comfort will come from within me. I resolved to heal myself every time I think of what had happened to me, pull myself a breath at a time from sorrow's hold.

The god of the dead tilted my jaw up impatiently then I felt him shove me towards the bed. The side of my face hit the crisp sheets painfully and I was exposed to him in a most degrading and vulnerable way.

I reminded myself of my earlier epiphany so that I may not break down when I needed my strength most. I gripped the sheets in anticipation.

But I did not feel the dip of the bed from his body. I gasped when my sight was restored and looked around wildly.

I was alone again and my heart felt like it had plummeted from the cliff of my house and into the crashing waves. I bit my lip so the pain could stem the throb of my blood, this foreign heat I was unaccustomed to.

I lay there unmoving for a long time, convinced that the god would be back to consume me entirely but he did not.

A rustle alerted me and I lifted my head. I saw the silver steps again amid the leafy walls. I pushed myself off the bed and crouched to retrieve my dress.

All the heavy emotions closed on me and my tears fell bitterly. I pushed myself to the pain at the violation of my soul. To know my pain fully allowed me to conquer it, crush it into me like thorns to my chest.

I picked up the brooches from the ground and stepped inside the silken circle of my dress and pulled it around me, fastening it once more. I padded towards the steps. The break in the walls allowed my to get out, but I knew I could not ever go out of this realm. The despair, the doubt that I would not be able to heal my soul jumped in my mind as the tears raged on.

As I reached the silver steps, my mind pushed a bitter thought to the fore, that even if I did console myself, I would still be wandering through this endless, misty realm forever in pieces.

* * *

When I opened the door at the bottom of the steps, a cloaked servant approached me and asked where I wanted to go. That jeweled mask of black diamonds they wore over their lips muffled her voice. I told her I needed a bath and we walked the endless hall once again towards the door that led to the bathing chamber.

The floor was cold on my feet.

When we arrived, I was relieved to see that it was empty. I could not deal with people touching me.

I walked to the large pool, seeing the steam rise from the water. I slowly undressed by its rim and stepped into the water. There was a cloth on a wooden tray near the sloping steps. It was rough as though nets had been squeezed together to form it. I took the cloth, dipped it in the water as soon as I settled in the bath, and pressed it to extract the excess.

My hair flowed down my shoulders and I watched as the ends floated in the pool. The cloth in my hand scrubbed against my left arm tentatively first, then I pushed it hard against my skin. I cleaned myself with such raw fervor to drive away the crawling feeling the memory of my encounter with the god summoned.

My skin felt tender as it languished in the water after the unpitying treatment I lavished on it. This was perhaps the way clay felt after my father had scored it with a sharp stick before transferring them to the kiln.

I stood up and walked out the bath and into the spread of cotton cloth held by the servant to dry me. My dress was not in the floor anymore and a new one rested on a small table, which the servant fetched. It glided down my body smoothly like the other one. Half my hair was twisted and plaited up into my head while the other half cascaded over my shoulders.

Afterwards, the servant led me out of the room and into the hall. We walked quite a distance before the next door we entered. Inside a cavernous room softly lit by hundred of candles on either wall, a grand table as long as several of my arms stretched rested in the center of the room. Meats, fruits, and bread spread themselves on top and I had only realized how I had not eaten for a long time. The smell was divine yet my greeting of them was hollow.

The chair scraped as I pulled it when I neared the table to sit. I reached for a fig, opened it and stared at it, and imagined my teeth sinking into its sweet flesh. It did not tempt me. I extended my hand towards the slices of meats, breads and fruits like grapes and pears and filled my plate, yet my tongue did not long for them.

The servant materialized beside me with a golden goblet. It contained the same honeyed liquid I drank before. I took a sip to taste and was enamored with the liquid's lightness; it slipped down my throat with ease. I drank greedily, satisfying a thirst I did not know I had.

The darkly cloaked servant helped me out of my chair and asked me where I wanted to go. And where indeed?

I remembered the field and the golden haired man before the god summoned me and I told the servant where I wanted to go.

We stepped outside the door and I was back in the Elysian Fields, though not on the same place where I met the man with piercing eyes. But the poignancy the realm inspired was the same, the light mists still lay on the field, bathing the small colorful flowers dotting it in a muted serenity and the sky was a soft sheen above all.

I sensed the servant depart and I walked towards the small hill in the distance. I ran after a few steps, wanting the rush of air to spark some life back into me, for me to feel something else.

I ran up the hill where a lone tree stood, its weeping branches drooped like tendrils to the ground as though its white leaves were a burden. Atop, I scanned my surroundings and allowed the scenery to deny the hopeless feelings within me. I went inside the tree's embrace, glad for a shelter, and sunk to the ground, sending the fallen petals upwards to be carried by the soft wind that passed. I wished there were animals here to play with, just as I did in the woods by my old home. But the fulfillment of this wish was as distant as the stars I would never see anymore.

I lay down on the soft grass and looked at the sky between the tree's spindly branches. It was changing color, splashed with indigos and oranges, but never from light to dark, as though the sun or whatever shining orb that lit the underworld hovered over the edge of the horizon but never fully left.

Memories of my family snaked their way into my thoughts once more, and before I cried again, I resolved single-mindedly not to think of them, not when the wound of our parting was still a gaping cleft in my heart.

My thoughts drifted to the god of the dead that brought me here and at once, I flared in anger, confusion, bitterness, and fear, like a great raging fire that greedily drank up its fuel of wood. I knew our encounter would not be the last one, nor would he stop again as he did.

I thought of the ills he must have in store for me, wondered the reasons that inspired it, and what of my new place in this world. I felt tired of thinking about everything that has happened to me, wishing that I could return to that time when I was unaware of my destiny.

Deflated, I turned to my side, rested my head on my arm while I curled into me and closed my eyes, grateful for the sweet peace my sleep would give.

* * *

He gripped his adamantine throne as he drained the last of the honeyed Ambrosia from his goblet. He was alone in the Trivium.

The white flames on the wall quivered, a reflection of the furious passion that still thrummed through him from his encounter with Katniss.

He had to stop where he did or else his plan would not work.

He knew humans too well, weak and prone to all manner of pleasure. He knew immortals a great deal and their arrogance. Both were present in a gratifying entanglement in the girl and he would stoke that just as a blacksmith stoked the fire where his metals would become pliant for him to bend to his will.

And already, from their brief tryst, he sensed the girl arousing and responding to him, even if it was just a sigh. She would be confused, that he knew. But he would be patient with her, seducing and coaxing every mewl and moan until she abandoned her high walls of pride and propriety and he reduced her to a writhing woman who would take everything he would give her for his enjoyment and pleasure, until she became enslaved by her fear of him and what he can do to her. Only then would he have taught her a lesson for her earlier insult to him.

The blue flames that showed him anything he wished to see told him that Katniss was in the Elysian Fields.

Good, he would go there and see the effect of their encounter on her.

A servant materialized from her black smoke to give him more Ambrosia, which he drunk without pausing. Then he marched out the Trivium and into the adamantine hall.

He went out a different door and plucked a pale cream narcissus flower for Katniss.

The tree on the hill stood far but he took his time. This would not take long, for he knew there was to be another judging of souls at the Trivium.

He climbed up the hill and gently pushed the curtain of branches aside, some of the wilted leaves detaching themselves to flutter around him before they fell to the ground. He walked towards the sleeping girl.

Katniss lay there, coiled to her side on a bed of grass and tiny mauve hyacinths. The white leaves were a veil to her rich, dark hair splayed out underneath her serene face. Her fingers curved gently inward from delicate wrists.

He knelt beside her carefully and gazed at her sleeping face, taking amusement in her senses forsaking their alert duties as though beguiled by the harmonious notes of a lyre. He took the narcissus and tenderly traced the high bone of her cheek, down the slope that ended in her chin, and further down the neck he mapped earlier.

She was a spellbinding sight in all her innocence and he breathed her essence in.

She slowly stirred and he withdrew the flower. He moved to sit and rest his back against the rough bark of the tree in order to not startle her.

The girl sat up, unhurried in her movement, and looked to her side, her hair falling gracefully down the bare skin of her back uncovered by her dress.

"You're awake," he called to her in a voice different from the rough one he used earlier.

She turned towards the sound.

Her eyes widened when she recognized him. He smiled sweetly at her, stood up, and walked to where she sat.

He crouched by her side and produced the lone narcissus and gave it to her.

"For you, because I angered you before. I am sorry."

He watched her face struggle to recollect the memory before she spoke, holding the delicate flower against her chest.

"Thank you. I also want to apologize for my behavior. My anger was misdirected," she replied.

His smile did not waver as he shook his head.

"How have you been?" He asked gently.

And he saw an emotion he did not expect flit across her face: sadness. She did not reply and looked down, her hair shyly following her movement to shield her face from him. Her reluctance may have been unanticipated but he would not let the opportunity of getting to know this girl pass.

He stood up and held out a hand for her. "Come. I would like to show you something."

She looked up at him with heavy eyes before pushing herself up with the help of his hand. He withdrew it from her when she had stood.

They walked down the hill and into the nearby woods, their path lined by tiny cream blooms that grew low on the ground. The branches on the trees bent to create an arc over their heads, with more white leaves falling around them. He led her towards the bridge at the end, suspended over a gentle stream of tinkling pewter.

Katniss was quiet and reserved.

Soon, they arrived at their destination: a circular marble edifice with a domed roof supported by columns.

"What is this?" Katniss asked as she looked up from between two pillars.

"It's where the memories of the souls go, before they are reincarnated," he answered.

They descended the spiraling floor, the wall twinkling with rows and rows of memories, each stored in a transparent globe.

Katniss took one that glowed when she neared it. She looked at it intently, the globe like a giant drop of tear on her hand, frail and trembly. It must have been showing her its contents.

She dropped the memory suddenly and gasped.

The hazy images floated like wisps of smoke, then a heartbreaking whisper spewed out from her as she watched the ascent of the contents,

"Grandmother," was the single word she intoned with such sorrow.

He looked at one image, gathered it in his hands, and watched the scene where a small girl with two braids, a younger Katniss, raced ahead in a beach with the sun dancing on her skin while an old woman smiled fondly at her.

He turned to Katniss and she was crying now.

"I'm sorry!" she mumbled. "I'm so sorry! I did not mean to drop it. I didn't think I'd see her again."

She sniffed and continued, "I'm in shambles now and I'm sorry you have to see me like this. Seeing my grandmother again brought back all the memories of my family."

He was at a loss for what to do as her shoulders slumped when the sobs overtook her.

Finally, he walked to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with her glistening, watery eyes.

"I did not even get your name. Who are you?"

He swallowed before replying. "My name is Peeta."

She smiled weakly and wiped her nose with her hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you Peeta. But would it be fine with you if you took me back to the hill? I would like to be alone for now."

He nodded, and she added through her tears, "But I appreciate what you did. Thank you for showing me around and for being so kind."

Peeta felt a dull thud at his chest. It was a peculiar sensation.

He led her out the vault of memories and back to the tree, with only her quiet sobs as the companion to the sound of their footsteps as she trailed him.

* * *

This girl was proving to be troublesome, he thought as he sat on his throne, alone again in the Trivium.

He had given her the name he had not used for a long time, not since the divine wars with their Titan progenitors ended. It was long and vicious, and neither side was winning until the gifts of the Cyclopes to him and his brothers tipped the scale of fate to their favor. The god of the sky received his thunderbolt, the god of the sea his trident, and he his helm of invisibility. After their triumph, they divided the realms to be ruled. He was unknowledgeable of the world then, having spent his life in the belly of his father who swallowed him whole upon his birth. He incarnated himself to roam the mortal realm and know more of the souls he would rule over. Fruits of that journey were the dandelions in the Asphodel Meadows—a small token he took for things he was not fond of remembering.

He rested his chin on one palm while his other hand drummed on his lap.

Katniss never did as he expected her. He had wanted to see a changing girl, but certainly not a hysterical one.

 _She was an annoying puzzle_ , he thought, sighing.

The memory globes sparked an idea in his head.

Peeta summoned the blue flames and they filled the court.

"Show me the girl's family," he whispered.

At once, he saw a man sitting on a wooden stool. An oven burned by and the man's skin glistened with sweat. This must be the mortal father of Katniss, the one who brought her up even though he did not sire her.

The man was painting a red vase, even though surrounding him must be hundreds of vases.

The paintings were all exquisite in detail: a toddler reaching out for her mother, a young girl spiritedly running, a young woman comely in her gait. They all bore a resemblance to Katniss, whether in the corner of a smile or the swish of a braid or the spark in the gray eyes that seemed to glow from the paintings.

He looked at the father's somber face, as though the world poured its grief into its lines, as he persisted in his work. Katniss and her father furrowed their eyebrows the same way.

Peeta moved on to look at her mother, frozen in bed even though the sun had been high. Her hair was matted and she wore a vacant expression despite the tears that pooled on her bed. There was a tray of untouched food by the floor. She lay on her side like Katniss did when he saw her under the tree.

Then a younger girl came into the view, the one he had chosen if Katniss did not volunteer.

She was alone in the market, bartering her father's vases for commodities and buying vegetables she placed on a rough, woven basket that was too large for her slim arms. She was built smaller than the people surrounding her as she fought her way out of the city. He watched her carry the basket uncomplainingly up the high cliffs and into her home. After placing the vegetables on the table, the sister moved to the room where the mother lay, took the tray of food that she fed to an ugly cat, and went to the kitchen to prepare their meal.

This girl's fortitude was admirable.

He wanted to know more so he searched back to the reaping and saw how fiercely Katniss clung onto her mother before the ceremony, how her sister sunk behind the temple's pillar in tears as Katniss was taken by the priest, and how her father's eyes never left her face as she walked towards the ship.

He saw the days her family spent after the reaping were the same, a monotony of events unpunctuated by any joy but only that of a struggle to fill an absence.

He had never before inspected a human's life so closely, and he cursed his weakness for doing so.

* * *

I felt the tightness left by the tears that had dried on my skin. I had been lying here under the shade of the tree for a long time after Peeta left me, the white flower resting on my chest.

Time was inappreciable here and the hours spilled into each other.

There was no night, just the shifting of the sky, and I slumbered whenever sleep beckoned me with its dark temptation of respite.

I did not know how many hours had passed since my encounter with my grandmother's memories, since I saw them disappear into the air as immaterial as the specters of loneliness that haunted me after.

I hummed quietly to myself. I needed anything to fill my sense of hearing.

Then in my grief, against my will like almost everything that had happened to me, I closed my eyes and imagined that I was back home, that I was racing up the cliffs towards our house, that the sun imparted its warmth down my back and the sea provided a lullaby with its waves. I ran with my hands outstretched as I felt the tall grass tickle my legs and I hurried towards the salt-aged door. I heard the bustling laughter of my family again; probably father tickling Prim.

I had done this many times before that the picture in my head was so vivid, my hand actually outstretched, and it was as if the messenger had never brought me here to the awful realm of the god of the dead, but I was back at my house.

But I never opened the door because the tree hissed from a gust of wind and it broke the spell, and I was slowly pulled back to the underworld as the vision dissolved. I was under the tree with the stooped branches, lying in grass that was shorter.

The trail of tears refreshed as I crushed the petals of the flower in my hand.

* * *

A mortal had never before claimed space in his thought the way Katniss did, he thought, agitated.

He had only moments ago checked on her and he saw that she was still crying, like her mother. All these silly mortals did, it seemed, was cry and grieve when they had parted.

Peeta rubbed his forehead wearily.

Katniss acted the most atypical of all.

First, she willingly took her sister's place in the sacrifice, knowing full well it meant her death, which goes against what other mortals had been doing for they never prayed the loudest as when their lives were in peril. Then came her professed dislike for the gods and the way of the world as ordained by fate.

He thought back to their encounter in his room. It was only now that the thought occurred to him, that perhaps he had been wrong in reading her lack of enthusiasm, her lack of response to his actions. Her trembling and her look of defiance did not stem from pleasure, judging by the river of tears she must have cried by now. The realization turned into a cold heavy stone.

Impatiently, he summoned one of the Fates. It was the apportioner who answered his call this time and he asked her without delay when she arrived in trails of smoke.

"Why is she here? Tell me the true reason," he asked, almost pleadingly.

The old woman with the bent back walked towards his throne slowly before she replied.

"Ah my liege, it is most unfortunate that the answer does not lie with me but with her. Has thou forgotten that which we had all agreed upon at the end of the divine war? That the mortals were to carve their fate with their actions?"

He closed his eyes and inhaled in frustration. It was useless to have summoned this crone. It angered him more that he knew beforehand that she would not yield anything he did not already know.

He waved his hand away to dismiss her. When she only smiled serenely at his plight, he shouted at her forcefully to leave.

But the apportioner did not depart but merely asked him if he had looked more into the girl's family, as it may provide an indication of what he can expect of the girl.

He replied that he did, but that it was futile.

"Did you look closer, my liege? Especially with the sister?"

He gave her a long, measuring look before they turned towards the blue flames.

It showed the sister, walking once more but now at night, the moon setting her skin faintly aglow. Her feet marched on a dusty road until she knelt before a low stone mound by the mouth of an empty field.

She placed a lily on the stone and whispered,

"I miss you everyday, Katniss." She closed her eyes as pain overtook her small frame.

When she opened them again, she continued her stream of confession.

"I'm so sorry you were the sacrifice, that I was not strong enough to stop you and your stubbornness. I'm sorry that there's nothing for us to even bury, that all your possibilities were taken away. That I won't have any nieces or nephews to look after…" Her voice broke as her tears overwhelmed her and she stopped speaking.

Peeta looked at the girl with a hardened gaze.

When the girl composed herself, she smiled at the stone as though it understood her sorrow.

"I'm still not used to not having you around. Father has not stopped painting since the reaping. He's been painting around the empty space you left behind.

"And mother has been too desolate. Not even father or I can bring her out of the pit she dug herself in.

Then the girl tucked her hair behind her ear, still kneeling before the stone.

"Remember when we were young and I would cry a lot when I scraped my knee from following you around and you would either scream at me to stop or soothe me as I cried? Well you're not here anymore to hold me, and I've been crying too much I wonder how I still have tears…"

He watched the salty beads carve a path down the girl's face in the same manner as her sister's.

They reached into the other days and saw the sister coming to the stone mound every day, talking to Katniss, sometimes crying, sometimes smiling, but always with a mournful air.

The blue flames extinguished themselves. He had seen enough.

Peeta ran a hand through his hair as he exhaled heavily and turned to the Fate, whom he asked to leave.

The apportioner only smiled before she vanished once again in smoke. Then the council entered for the next judgment of souls. He saw them appraise the white flames that licked the walls high.

Peeta sank back to his throne.

He watched as the boatman led the souls into the Trivium from the door that connected the room to the sea of Erebus where the souls crossed.

A servant came with another goblet of Ambrosia as the councilman read the proclamation.

The souls before him were like a herd of sheep, like the mortals who would be too lost if it had not been for the guidance of the gods.

He viewed their lives with indifference as the blue flames recalled them. There were many souls to be judged this time and he impatiently sipped from his goblet as his council pronounced where the souls would go.

When it was finally his turn to pass down the punishment for those who would be sent to Tartarus, he meted out the same ones as before, save for this group of men who had pillaged a small village, taken its women against their will, and killed their babes by their feet.

He did not like the fear their eyes glinted with, nor the tremble in their jaw as they tried to not look at him. He had found the punishment for them.

"These souls shall be tied to the chairs of forgetfulness while flames seared their bodies and their earthly lives played before them so they see what they had done yet have no recollection of them for eternity in the pit of Tartarus."

One of the councilmen, Minos, turned to him, perhaps to argue the necessity of such a grave punishment they had not passed before. But Peeta silenced the councilman with an icy look that dared him to defy the god and be sent to test the punishment in behalf of the souls.

* * *

Peeta's forehead was on his palm, eyes closed, as his finger swept the rim of the goblet where he drained the Ambrosia. He had been sitting on his throne since the souls and his councilmen had left.

A clap of thunder, a rumble of the skies in his realm, announced the untimely presence of his brother and he looked up and saw him, god of the sky, the supreme deity, in the middle of the Trivium's square court. The splendor of his dark-haired brother was uncontained and his fearsome aegis was luminescent from the flames of the Trivium.

It had been some time since he last saw his brother and had been dealt his impatient and unsmiling expression.

Peeta did not stand up and merely cocked his head to the side as if to ask why his brother was here when none of the Olympians deigned to go to his realm.

"We need to talk," came his brother's gruff voice.

"What a pleasure to see you too, brother. To what do I owe this visit?"

"I need your little pet."  _Ah, always direct to the point and frugal with words,_ he thought.

The god of the sky continued. "If you did not know yet, she's the daughter of the god of harvest, bringer of abundance, and he wants her returned to the mortal realm."

He regarded his brother coolly. "No."

He heard the god sigh. "Brother please. He stopped the earth from yielding the fruit of its seeds and the mortals are dying from hunger."

Peeta rolled his eyes disdainfully. "And how is that my problem? It seems the situation would only give me more constituents to rule over and less of them to pray to you."

"Don't be a fool," the god of the sky whispered, "We all need the mortals."

Peeta shook his head, as though thoroughly amused. "No, you need the mortals to provide you with endless honor. The souls here can sustain me enough."

His brother narrowed his eyes. "Did you plan for this then?"

He barked out a laugh. "No, of course not. I only had to let fate run its course. It's something that her dear father should learn. And perhaps you as well, since you are here despite the understanding that we were never to meddle with the fate of mortals."

It seemed his brother reached the end of his patience as another clap of thunder boomed. "I will not have this defiance! You will hand her over now." And his brother walked up the short steps menacingly towards his throne.

He stood and met him halfway, spitting out his answer as the flames responded to his emotions. "She's  _mine_  and she will stay here with me _._ She  _chose_  me. She  _bound_  herself to me the moment she took her sister's place and not even her godly father can tamper with her choice that had been given freely," he finished savagely, staring his brother down.

"A compromise then," his brother offered, despite the angry lines on his forehead.

"No." And he turned back, his cloak sweeping in an arc. "And you can show yourself out," he shouted to his brother.

He left the Trivium heavy with anger and in search of Katniss.

* * *

After I had cried, the effort exhausted me and I slept.

When I awoke, everything was still the same, the mists still swept through the fields, and an ache still raged in me.

I stood up slowly, stretching my arms and legs that had been asleep, the motion waking me thoroughly. The life I led here, with no definite duties, where I can play amongst the grass or run wherever I pleased, would have been a child's dream, but it held an empty allure to me. I rubbed my eyes to remove the crusts that had formed. In the distance, when I opened my eyes, I saw a river.

I felt my feet move towards the river, where I can end all this. I was not strong enough after all and I drew no comfort from myself, despite my earlier promise.

The feelings that the god of the dead inspired with his unwelcome touch invaded me still, like the time when I almost drowned and I could not stop the water from entering me.

It was a long walk towards the river but I felt like I drifted there, even though I was sure many small flowers lay crushed in the trail I walked.

As I neared and saw the river, glinting like a liquid looking glass, I knew that I would soon empty myself of this hurt, that the shadows of hopelessness would not follow me anymore, and I would stop wishing for everything that had been. I would have no past and no future.

I was about to dip my feet into the river when a strong force gripped my arm and pulled me back.

I was met with the bluest eyes belonging to the only other being I had seen, apart from the cloaked servants with the jeweled masks that covered their mouths.

"Let me go!" I cried.

His gaze was stern. "No. Do you know what river this is?"

I shook my head, uncaring.

"It's the river of forgetfulness," he intoned as if it held meaning to me.

"What do you care? I only want everything to stop!" I bemoaned.

Then I dropped to my knees, my left arm still a pole that pointed skywards because Peeta held my wrist. We would have made a strange portrait by the river.

He noticed my inability to struggle and asked, "Have you even been eating?"

I shook my head and said nothing, devoid of any worry over my weakened state.

I heard him hiss in anger when I felt another presence nearing us and I saw the darkly cloaked servants.

"No!" I wailed.

I stood up and gripped Peeta's black tunic frantically. "Please, I don't  _want_  to go back to the god of the dead."

He shook his head apologetically. "It will be all right Katniss," echoing the last words my parents said to me at the reaping.

Then he pried my hands from his chest and handed me to the servants.

They surrounded me, like before, and I trudged heavily against the grass.

I looked back at Peeta and I was sure both our eyes held the same sadness and regret.

* * *

He walked towards the door he came from in the Elysian Fields and was back at his palace. He turned right with haste and walked further, until he reached the door that led to the mountain of the gods and went inside.

He saw the messenger of the gods greet him with a nod by the gate of clouds. The residence of the other Olympians was a coiled fortress of gold and marble at the very top of the ridged mountain. Just as the others did not visit him in the underworld, he was also rarely present in this common realm.

Peeta took one of the chariots at the foot of the mountain, cursing that he did not bring his own. The white winged horses were not to his taste. But still, they brought him up to the top where his brother resided.

He alighted from the chariot and into his brother's balcony where he heard the grunts and pants that shivered in the air from the open window like the gauzy curtains.

His brother was chiefly infamous among the gods for his lovers and indiscretions that outrivaled even the goddess of love, pursuer of passions.

Peeta rolled his eyes as he heard a shout and more moans. He was sure his brother was not bedding his wife, judging by the sounds of pleasure and the absence of scraping nails and torrid shuffles.

He loathed waiting for anyone but he let his brother and his brother's lover finish.

When they did, Peeta unceremoniously walked in, never mind that they were still in their suggestive position while they savored the heights of their passion, before they could begin another round and he was made to wait once more.

He was amusingly surprised when it was indeed the goddess of marriage, lady of the sky, who was in bed with his brother.

"We need to talk," Peeta said nonchalantly, echoing their earlier conversation.

"About what?" His brother panted out. His knees gave out and he collapsed on top of his wife.

"About the compromise."

* * *

The masked servants brought me to another room from the hall of endless doors.

I lay in a bed as soft as clouds, veiled in the finest silk, and it brushed against my skin tenderly when I shifted my position. It was not the same room where I encountered the god of the dead. It was smaller and darker with rough walls.

There were candles beside the bed and the small flames were my only source of light.

I wished I could hurl my foolish hopes of being released from here into the fire, just like the bird I saw at my first reaping. I envied the uncertainty of existence of that bird, because had it known it would die in the sacred fire, it would not have flown there. Yet it did, blissfully unaware of its doom, unlike me.

I knew the god of the dead would be coming soon to claim what he did not before, and I felt fear as I never had, a dreading of what will come to pass.

I shifted to my side to look at the candles. What my grandmother said to me one night, that a light seems to burn brighter because of the darkness it finds itself in, fluttered through my mind. But I did not have any spark left in me to stoke a flame. And the memory of grandmother caused the other memories of my family to crash down on me like furious waves, and I wished that a hole would open in my chest and consume my memories, for I knew better than to hope for such a thing as seeing my family again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greek Mythology Notes  
> -According to the myth, Persephone came to such a deep depression over being abducted by Hades that she weakened and did not eat anything, hence the portrayal of Katniss here.
> 
> -The narcissus flower that Peeta gave Katniss was in the original bouquet of flowers that Persephone gathered in the plains of Nysa before Hades sprang up from a chasm in the earth and took her away.
> 
> -A separate myth over the narcissus flower tells that there was once this beautiful boy named Narcissus who was the son of a nymph and a river. He scorned love and all those who fell in love with him. The goddess Nemesis then condemned him to spend the rest of his days admiring his reflection in a pool, finally finding love in himself. He died and was turned into a flower that bears his name.
> 
> -Erebus is where the souls crossed with Charon coming into the underworld.
> 
> -There was indeed a chair of forgetfulness that Hades used as punishment for two heroes who went to the underworld in the hopes of wooing Persephone.
> 
> -The divine wars were the Olympians's war with the Titans over supremacy. The defeated Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus but not all were banished, like Prometheus, Hyperion, Ocean, and others. The Cyclopes, the giant, one-eyed beings, gave Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades their principal weapons and armor (thunderbolt, trident, and helm) for the war. Zeus also had the aegis as his breastplate.
> 
> -Lastly, you may have noticed that I used the titles of the gods instead of their names. This was inspired by the Homeric Hymns where the gods were referred to in titles after their name. Hades was called Host of the Many because of the numerous souls he ruled over in the underworld. Some of the other titles I used were made up, like "heir of the trident" for Poseidon, "giver of abundance" for daddy "Demeter," and "pursuer of passion" for Aphrodite.


	5. Chapter 5

I awoke into a serene state. My eyes did not blink open in haste, as they did before if I had slept past the time I should have woken. The leisurely movement felt as natural as the flower petals opening at dawn to receive the cool dew. Any pain I had felt had from my predicament already dulled itself, just as any sharp object would if it pounded repeatedly against a wall.

I breathed in deep, staring at the rough wall across my bed, the candles still burning by.

Slowly, my body woke.

There was a table by the door that held another goblet, and I knew already what it contained. I drank the sweet liquid greedily.

It was then that the thought came to me. I was never hungry anymore. I was past my pain. My fears had taken themselves back to their shadowy lair. I had no reason to be happy. I had no reason to smile.

I realized I felt nothing.

The year before I was eligible to be reaped, the season before the leaves fell from the trees completely, I always swam in a pond in the woods at the back of my home. One day, when I heard my mother call me, I stood up quickly from the water, just as an icy wind passed. My skin recoiled from the cold.

It had left me stunned, just as I was now.

I felt not joy, nor sorrow. Not contentment, nor displeasure.

This realm, which had taken much from me, had also robbed me of my emotions that I felt like a shell that had been lifted from the sea and emptied.

It was that desperate thought that made me knock the goblet to the floor and rush out the door and into the infinite hallway.

I ran until I saw a familiar scene peeking out from one open door.

I went inside then slowed to a stop, hunching as I heaved from my effort.

The cool wind of the Elysian Fields were welcome, as were the soft grass beneath my feet, even the light mist that I had always found so sad felt like a dear friend, a witness to my life here in this realm.

Then I heard a voice I was well acquainted with.

"Were you planning to run away?"

I straightened up my body before I turned to him.

Peeta was wearing the same dark tunic as he leaned beside the door, a curious dark box in the middle of a field. His head was tilted to one side as he regarded me.

"And where can I go that I shall not be found?" I replied.

He covered the short distance between us, and I felt my feet dig into the ground as he scrutinized me.

"You have not been well," he murmured as his eyes roved my face, ignoring my question.

"You would too if you had been ripped from your world."

"True," he intoned softly with the slightest smile.

"I do not wish to talk about it," I said, suspecting what he was about to ask next. The smile did not leave his face as he turned to leave.

But before he pulled away, I had an idea.

"Will you show me around?" I asked, tugging at the fold of his tunic above his belt.

I was desperate to deny what I had realized earlier.

He looked over his shoulder and replied, "I have been wanting to."

I felt the muscles on my face retract and smoothen.

"Then let's go. Please," I almost begged.

He gave a curt nodded before walking forward and I followed.

I recognized the road he was leading me, the same path of white, felled leaves and arching branches.

"Are you taking me to the memory place?" I asked as I walked faster so I was beside him.

"Yes I am," he turned and smiled.

"Is there no place else we could go? I do not wish to cause more trouble," I said, remembering the last, embarrassing encounter there where I broke down at my grandmother's memories.

"I think you would like what I would show you," he replied.

Soon, we walked past the bridge over the stream. Then the circular edifice appeared, spiraling to the ground, with the walls lined with the memories.

Peeta led me deeper into the vault, the memories glowing and displaying their contents, and I could see people inside the clear globes.

He stopped at one and held it.

"Give me your hand," he said, and he guided the one I gave him to cover the globe.

It felt warm in our palms, but before I could flit my eyes to his face, I felt my sight being drawn by the soft globe. And I began to see things inside it, a man hunched over a scroll, scribbling. I blinked, and when I opened them, we were in a different place.

It was dark, and I leaned into Peeta, grasping his hand.

"It's ok," he hushed, "We're inside his memories, Katniss.

"The man you saw inside the globe was a poet. And we're about to be enchanted by his tale," he looked down at me and smiled. He squeezed my hand in assurance.

We stood in a barren land, dark and without clouds, the stars scattered plentifully in the night sky. Then we saw a tall man, graceful and lithe, and another he referred to as his brother.

"The first one is the titan of forethought, and his brother, the titan of afterthought. The god of the sky spared them after the divine wars because they sided with the gods. They've been delegated the task of creating the creatures to roam the world," Peeta added.

"You've seen this before?" I asked, as the two beings in front of us set about creating different animals, gathering and shaping dust.

"Yes, it is one of my favorite tales. Look now, the titan of afterthought has endowed the animals with the best gifts: strength, swiftness, courage, and shrewd cunning, fur and feathers, and wings and shells, that he did not leave any for the humans," he answered.

And indeed, the animals from the dust had sprung to life and moved past us: swift herds of deer, cunning foxes, majestic eagles, and eager shoals of fish.

I reached out towards a hopping bunny, the image swirling at my finger like ripples in a pond.

After the animals, we saw the titan of forethought arguing with his brother, for what was left to give to humans if all the gifts had been given to animals?

He took over the task of creation and fashioned man in nobler shape, unlike the animals, and to walk upright, like the gods. He gave them fire, which he brought down from the sun. And he murmured that though man was feeble and short-lived, he had fire and could learn crafts the beasts of the land could not.

"There is more," Peeta leaned in and whispered.

And the scenery changed to a mountain in the clouds, where we saw the god of the sky angry at the titan of forethought for what he had done for men, and he swore revenge.

He created, as the poet said, a great evil for men, a sweet and irresistible presence, crowned with loveliness and in the image of a shy maiden, and they called her Pandora, and from her the race of women came. They were an evil to men, but it was not the final act of the god of the sky.

I scoffed at the poet's choice of words and I heard Peeta chuckle beside me.

Then the god of the sky brought Pandora down to the world and gave her an ornate box. The god of the sky instructed Pandora to never open this box, for each of the gods had placed harmful things in it, and sent her to the titan of afterthought, who gladly accepted her as companion. His brother had warned him of accepting anything that came from the god of the sky.

Then we saw Pandora, a woman of lively curiosity, bend down and open the box.

Out came innumerable plagues, sorrow, and mischief for mankind, the poet said, rushing in a billow of dark clouds and sweeping through the lands. In terror, Pandora clamped the lid shut but it had been too late.

The titan of forethought approached the stricken woman and told her to open the box again. And inside was the last content of the box—hope—the only good that the casket contained, and the titan said that this was to be mankind's comfort in all his misfortune.

And we watched as the shining cloud of hope sweep through the lands as well.

Then the scenery dissolved before my eyes and we were back to the wall of memories.

It reminded me of a child with two braids who raced through the market stalls, pulling her father's hand eagerly as she heard the laughs from the agora's center, where the poets and actors in their colorful masks narrated the story of the gods. She would sit eagerly at the top of the amphitheatre, filled like a goblet of wine on a feast, and watch. And laugh. And cry. And when it was over, her father would carry her out of the amphitheatre, out the city, and up into the cliff where their home was perched.

And I smiled at my memory as I watched Peeta return the delicate globe back to the wall.

"Thank you," I whispered and he smiled in return, even if he did not know the weight behind my words, that in seeing the poet's memories, mine strengthened. I was sure that in my memories, I was with my family again, and the pleasure of us all being together still lived on inside me and can never be taken from me.

I breathed in deeply again and I was wrapped in a blanket of acceptance. I had embraced my anger and my melancholy, and they had let me go, drifting far away. What I had felt earlier was their absence, and the void it left would now be filled with new memories for me in this strange realm.

And this was how I had come to spend my time in the underworld.

I spent most of it with Peeta, sometimes coming back to explore other memories, living in the lives of other people, or sitting in the Elysian Fields as the mists slowly enfolded us. He asked me questions about my life, my family, and my city. And I answered as well as I could, my life being relived with every memory I shared with him. He listened eagerly, fascinated, with the space between his brows often scrunched. He laughed with me as I recounted the time when my sister thought she broke a vase father intended to sell to a city official, when it had be me who pushed it to its fragile limits moments ago, resulting in a thin crack. My sister was unfortunate enough to have moved it and caused the crack to weaken the vase and it crumbled in her hand.

He turned serious when my tales grew somber. He looked enthusiastic whenever I became animated.

We fell into a routine.

The masked servants would fetch me after some time and bring me to my room to rest and drink the sweet liquid and would return me to the fields when I had awakened.

And Peeta would be there, waiting unfailingly.

He slowly brought more smiles to my face and I heard myself laugh numerously. I noticed more and more things about him as my fear of the god of the dead returning for me lessened. I noticed how the veins in his hand ran thick up to his arm and the tumble of golden waves in his hair always fell to the left side of his forehead. And that he smiled when I smiled and his right cheek would lift first.

I found myself thinking of how his blue eyes would sweep my face when I showed him a bouquet of flowers I gathered from the field. Or how annoyed he looked when I weaved a crown of flowers for him, but not so well that the slightest breeze had the blooms spilling into his shoulders.

I began to think that he also enjoyed my company, for surely he would not be spending time with me if he hadn't, surely other souls were also there to associate with.

He filled the quietness between my thoughts more and more and I was beginning to feel a flicker of another emotion, similar to happiness but with an added delight.

But it all stopped when the god of the dead started sending me his gifts.

* * *

I hated that it was Peeta who had to bring them to me. He said he was tasked by the god to ask me which ones I preferred. They were always jewels and I always sent them back.

But that did not stop the god. And it was driving a wedge between Peeta and me as I saw him growing more exasperated at the god's demands and at my frustration at him when he could not answer when I asked him why.

"So do you like these ones?" Peeta asked, gesturing to the dark silk in the ground that contained rings and necklaces and earrings and other trinkets. We sat inside the tree with the weeping branches.

I took one of the large stones, a clear one, pronged in my fingers as I examined its mesmerizing depths.

I let out a long sigh and raised my eyes again to Peeta, the corner of my lips strained.

"They're beautiful, but I have no need for them."

"But they're gifts from the god of dead," he said, with a slight unbelieving shake of his head.

"As what, payment?" I replied bitterly, remembering his transgressions.

I folded up the cloth, returning the clear one with the others that gleamed in the light.

"Send it back," pressing the bundle into Peeta's hands.

And then I saw a most peculiar expression run across the angular planes of his face, something unbefitting the joyous man I had known him to be. It was a mix of hurt and anger, as though one had been unjustly accused, a resentment. But it was gone when I looked again.

"If that is what you wish," he said stiffly, taking the cloth back, but not letting go of my hands.

"Can I also wish for him to stop sending me these?" I muttered.

He unfolded the cloth again and took out a ring, "Just take one? Please?"

"No," I said more firmly, withdrawing my hand from him.

It had been like this recently. A pushing and pulling of hands and jewels and we would return to where we started, with me still unadorned and Peeta made to return with a full sac of jewels.

He stood up and I rested my arms back to support me as I flexed my legs that were stretched on the grass. The cotton hem of my dress tickled my calves and I twisted the green stems between my fingers.

When Peeta did not leave, I looked up at him. His expression hovered between wanting to say something and leaving.

"You're not going to take me to him, are you?" I asked.

Peeta chuckled and shook his head. "I will return later, after I had relayed to him your obstinacy."

I almost rolled my eyes as I watched him leave, drawing the curtain of thin branches aside as he passed.

"And you have company," he added and gestured to the lone servant walking towards the hill carrying a goblet.

When she reached me, I drank from the goblet eagerly. I was oddly never hungry and I felt that satiation would only come from the sweet liquid I frequently drank. I asked the servant once what it was called and she replied that it was Ambrosia.

After the servant left, I laid back, counting the leaves that still hung from the branches and slowly felt myself giving in to sleep.

When I woke in what seemed only moments later, Peeta was there beside me again. I had curled to my side and his body was near my outstretched arm.

"Back so soon?" I mumbled.

He had a deep baritone when he laughed quietly, and as I got up, I felt his smile disarmed me.

Now I rolled my eyes when I saw a small black sac once more, knowing what it contained.

"So eager," I added, muttering.

I sat with my right arm supporting me as I gave out my left to receive the tied pouch. When I did not move to open it, Peeta pulled the rough leather knot and the cloth fell.

Inside it was a necklace, with green and blue stones in a wavy link that reminded me of how the sea shone in the early morning sun. The second jewel was a ring, with a stone the same shade as my eyes. Then a delicate, fanning comb studded with golden flowers at its peak was underneath.

"I told him how you spent most of your life near the sea, and how the color of your eyes was none that I had ever beheld before. And that you liked weaving flowers into your hair. He said he would be pleased if you accepted these."

I inhaled shakily as my hand reached out to touch the exquisite necklace. None of the stones were as large as the ones in the earlier necklaces but together they were mesmerizing, sparkling even in the faint light. The stone on the ring was not enormous too, just the right size to not go beyond the width of my finger if I wore it.

I looked at Peeta's intent face, surveying mine for any slight hint that I would send these back. But the jewels now were different from before.

When I did not say anything, he asked, "May I?'

I nodded and bowed my head and he moved around me.

Then, from behind, his warm fingers, long and thick, brushed my hair aside to one shoulder.

I heard him unclasp the necklace. I felt the cool stones rest on my throat, but the heat from his fingers flitted nearby.

He momentarily brushed his hand down my spine after clasping the necklace.

Then he moved to my front and took my hand, holding it gently by the palm, my delicate fingers curled downward.

He moved the ring from the tip in a slow ascent. I breathed in slowly as I saw the band ease upward.

Lastly, he took the comb and gently tucked it into the braided knot that held half of my hair up, like a crown.

"There," he murmured roughly.

I breathed out as I raised my eyes to him.

"Beautiful," he said, pushing the curtain of hair back over my shoulder. A triumph sparked in his eyes as he smiled.

Then he stood up and left.

After his figure retreated into the light mist, I walked down the hill to a nearby pond and looked at myself.

Though I still saw me, something was unrecognizable in my reflection, like the landscape that had bloomed in the spring but changed when winter came. It must be the splendor, the silken tunics, the gold ornaments entwined in my dark hair, and the new jewels I had accepted. I had never before dressed like this, and now that I was aware of what I was swathed in, I thought I might drown in its empty beauty.

* * *

Peeta saw that he could not put it off any longer.

He had stalled, he had schemed, he had arranged for many things, but she had to be told, soon, of the compromise he had made with his brother.

And as swiftly as he decided, all their moments together flashed before him.

His curiosity and her strength.

His pride and her pride.

His anger and her brokenness.

His lust and her shyness.

Then her smile, her laugh, her eyes, and her memories.

He was filled with her and it was overwhelming his senses, goading at the monumental restraint he exercised whenever he was around her.

Peeta walked in the Elysian Fields towards the river of forgetfulness where he saw her almost jumping in before.

He cursed that very spot where he looked into her eyes as his servants escorted her away. They had been empty save for fear and sadness. She was too fragile then, even if she possessed a strong spirit. The uneasiness she inspired in him, what made him decide to go to his brother at that point, was like losing his footing and slipping, landing hard as the air was knocked out from him. And now he had to get back up and live with knowledge of his own frailty and bruised pride.

Katniss stood there again by the river, her back to him. He always knew where she was. Wisps of her hair danced in the swaying wind that also lifted the small petals from the ground.

He stopped when he reached her side.

Katniss did not speak but continued to look at the horizon, at the expanse of field on the other side that were the Asphodel Meadows.

"How far do they go?" She asked, breaking the silence between them.

"Maybe I'll show you some time," he answered.

She turned her head to him. "Why not now?" A teasing lilt twinkled in her voice.

He looked at her squarely in the eye and said the words he had come to say, "Because you're leaving soon."

Confusion unfurled in her expression, and he added slowly, after breathing in and swallowing.

"I overheard the god of the dead that he will allow you some time in the mortal realm," he finished quietly.

A burst of unexpected happiness radiated from her as she smiled her biggest yet. It tugged him at a place he did not know he had.

He was also unprepared for Katniss throwing her arms around his neck that he took a step back from the force. Her laughter, her unguarded joy, sunk into him.

She pulled back before his hands could settle at the dip in her lower back.

Katniss bit her lip, her fists clenched in eagerness.

"Thank you for telling me," she beamed, barely containing her merriment.

"It's not much, but you will be informed of it soon, and with more details."

She giggled and turned and ran back to the field, arms spread out as her feet pounded on the grass, the very image of vitality, leaving him alone.

Her scent lingered in the air still, before it settled in the petals, and these too fell to the ground.

He could see what he did, everything he did.

He should have been irresolute.

He should have been unyielding.

He should have been punishing.

He saw himself for who he really was, but was still left with an empty want.

Gathering himself, he stepped forward towards the door leading to Olympus.

* * *

He felt curious eyes follow him as he walked right through one of the goddess of love's carouses. He ignored all the drifting, floating dresses and the peal of soft laughter in the air as the nymphs, her servants and companions, gathered under the trees of golden apples, drinking ambrosia and idling away. Most of them, after having recognized him, moved away from his path.

The door to his brother's lair was straight ahead and it neared with his rapid gait.

But he was disoriented when he went inside because he found himself in the hot smithy of the god of fire. The smell of burning metal and the tang of hammers welcomed him.

Peeta was about to turn and leave when the crippled god emerged from a movement of curtain to his right.

"You are lost," the god simply said, the forging hammer dangling from his good arm.

"Of course not," Peeta answered, with a narrowing of his eye.

"Well, if you visited more often, you would know that the door to the god of the sea's abode is farther afield, past mine," the god said, going down the steps to his fiery forge.

"Yes, and a satyr should stand by your door to direct everyone into your cozy lair. The touches of the goddess of love are simply bountiful here," he remarked sarcastically.

"And speaking of your wife, I haven't had the pleasure of greeting her, and I might as well since I am already here," he added.

"She had another one of her revelries by the gardens," the god of fire responded as he brought his hammer down on a glowing sheet of metal.

"Oh? The one right outside? How curious that I did not see here there."

The crippled god stopped and breathed out angrily, "Then she's fucking the god of war."

"Hmm, such a happy partnership," he droned.

"Leave me be, god of the dead. Go seek another's company elsewhere," he said resignedly as he continued with his work.

Peeta was only too glad to turn away from the hot furnace and was about to step out when the god of fire called out once more.

"I almost forgot to tell you, we all had our little wager regarding your great matter. We made bets as to who will give in first, you or the god of harvest. And I must say quite a lot of weapons changed hands, for who would have thought that the feared god of the dead would so easily give up something of his."

Peeta stopped cold in his tracks. He felt a snarl working its way out of his throat but he composed himself again as he breathed heavily out.

"So what did you lose then?"

"Oh I didn't lose anything. I knew you would give in. Women tend to complicate things."

Peeta gave a curt nod and he stepped out, walked faster towards the other door he should have entered, his fury mounting.

He strode past the scared nymphs and almost pushed one aside.

He marched through the right door and into the hall of senses his brother built.

The god of the sea, heir of the trident, sat in his throne with two nymphs on his lap, one cooing at his ear and the other playing with his bronze hair.

He was also having a festivity in his domain beneath the seas. One of the scattered nymphs gave Peeta a goblet of Ambrosia, which he drank eagerly. He gripped it tight and wanted to hurl it. His brother spotted him and moved his companions aside.

"I may have been expecting you," his brother said as he reached Peeta's side.

The hall was hazy and was filled with more nymphs of flowing hair and exposed breasts. Notes of the lyre floated in the air.

"I take it your wife's not home?" Peeta asked, raising an eyebrow. His brother gave him another filled goblet of Ambrosia.

"But of course. And she also arranged this for me while she went off to one of her lovers."

His brother continued to blabber on but Peeta did not listen anymore because he had found what he needed as his blood pounded louder.

His eyes followed her from above the rim of his goblet, all blonde and pale as she crossed the room to another group of nymphs. Then she turned her delicate neck and their eyes locked, her fingers coming up to play coyly with her lips.

He stopped drinking and thrust his goblet to his brother, leaving him and crossing the hall, passing the blonde nymph. From the corner of his eye, he saw her following him.

He had decided.

He was far too coiled already. And it had started, that unstoppable want.

Peeta pushed open the first door he saw and it banged on the marble wall of the chamber. The nymph caught up to him, tugging at his dark tunic playfully.

He turned and kissed her open on the mouth.

She reached out and slammed the door shut with one hand as he pushed her back to the wall. The kiss was furious and rough, but it was not for pleasure.

Peeta broke the kiss and the nymph immediately planted more kisses down his neck, her errant hands roving. He saw a mirror and he pulled her so they stood before it.

They looked in the mirror, so alike in image that they could have passed for twins, all flaxen hair and cold eyes.

She looked ready, impish and seeking his lust, and he gave her a voracious look.

She purred.

He ripped her dress, the flimsy material easily tearing under his impatient hands.

She was naked before him, heaving, their eyes never breaking.

He pushed his lips to her ear, "How do you see me?"

Peeta's hands descended from the swell of her breast down to her navel. Her hand snaked to grip the back of his thigh.

"You are fearsome, my liege, a sight to behold, to desire" she rasped, knowing where his hands were going.

"Do you desire me then?"

"Yes, most ardently," she uttered.

"Good," he said curtly. "When I do to you the things you desire, I don't want you to cease speaking or looking at me. Tell me how you want me. Do you understand?"

She nodded, her mouth parted, smiling in anticipation. She opened her mouth to speak as his hands made their slow pilgrimage.

"Oh my liege, I want all of you. I want the others to envy me, what I had tasted, what had fulfilled me. I want…"

But she did stop when at last he reached that pulsing center of hers and she threw her head back to his shoulder.

Peeta roughly pulled her chin down to look back to the mirror.

"I said look and speak," he whispered bitingly.

By now, he was also throbbing, drowning in his need.

But he needed something else first.

He assaulted her moist depths, flushed and quaking, with his deft fingers. He found the seam and stretched it, and then he found the nub that brings her to madness.

The nymph's words were punctured with her moans. She sighed heavily.

He touched and pushed, running his fingers along the sensitive flesh.

Soon, the nymph was barely coherent, mumbling and mewling, her series of moans kissing his ear and he thirst for more.

Her movements became more frantic, her hips snapping in a rhythm, and Peeta stared at her frenzied body that was overtaken by his ministrations. The nymph's eyes were closed and her other hand weaved through his hair.

Then he buried his fingers in her, relentless, smothering her, and she came in a thundering shudder as all her senses converged. She cried out her burning ecstasy.

Peeta whispered in her neck, "Oh my beauty, I'm not finished with you yet,"

And he did not stop his assault, his hand drenched in her pleasure. She was whimpering, too sensitive from her recent height of passion but he blazed through.

The nymph could no longer think and twisted her head to his other shoulder. She sought his hand with her own thrusts, rocking into him violently.

Peeta saw the pair they made in the mirror, glistening in sweat and thrumming. His other hand held her by the waist because her strength had fled to her center.

And when she almost could not take anymore again, when her grunts turned to an ascending scream, he pulled his hand back swiftly, denying her that final break. She gave a frustrated shout.

He turned her limp body to face him and pushed her down to her knees.

Pouting and heaving, still convulsing from the relinquishment of her climax, the nymph did as she was bid. She quickly found him erect and took him her mouth.

Peeta closed his eyes at the relief, shuddering at the sensations now alive after having been dormant.

He dictated the pace and thrust savagely at her, the nymph taking anything he gave.

And he could feel it, that release he had been wanting, seeking.

But another face swam into his feverish mind. A different body, kissed by the sun. Darker hair flowing down in soft waves. Gray eyes.

_If only…_

Peeta grit his teeth and willed it away.

He concentrated on the nymph's throat he reached. He snapped his hips faster, the nymph's moans adding to his pleasure. He gripped her golden hair as her head bobbed, but the image had latched on to him.

He was beginning to feel spent as he grinded even faster. But the consummation never came.

The disappointment coursed through him in brutal waves.

Peeta pushed the nymph away roughly. Then he howled his anger.

The nymph backed away in fright.

He panted and clenched his fists.

Peeta screamed once more, a shout of hate ragged with bitterness. He fingers clawed his face before he adjusted his tunic.

Then he raced out of his brother's lair and out of the gods's abode.

His vision swam with spite.

Peeta thundered through his adamantine hall, the line of doors blurring past.

He entered one, raced up the steps loudly so she could hear his approach. When he came to the top, she was looking at him from her bed, puzzled. Her voice was thick with sleep.

"Peeta, what are you doing here?"

* * *

I asked him again, taking in his panting form, as though he ran to the mortal realm before he came here.

He staggered.

I noticed his hair was unkempt, he was sweating, and the tension rolled off him.

"You don't know," he grit out, pained.

I stood up from the bed and walked to its foot.

Peeta closed his eyes, moaned and defeated. "You don't know."

I stepped closer to him, standing right before him that I could feel his breath tickling my skin.

When he opened his eyes, they pinned me. And he snarled.

"Why do you think I'm the only one you see?"

I felt the energy radiated by his taut muscles. His jaw was clenched, his nostrils flared. I had never seen him like this.

"Who do you think I am?" He said darkly.

And then, as though a sheet of frozen metal wrapped around me, I understood.

I took a step back but he gripped me suddenly, painfully, by the shoulders. His eyes were a vicious blue in the faint light, but I met them defiantly.

"Have you come to finish—"

"Do you want me to?" He bit out with a savage promise.

I shoved him back with a strength I did not know I possessed.

"I am not to be toyed with," I hissed.

"Oh but you are. You're my little pet," he advanced on me, his expression untamed.

I slapped him and he held my wrist. "Don't test my patience, woman."

When I moved to scratch his face, he twisted me around painfully, holding both my arms. His lips moved to my ear. His hot breath woke the skin on my neck.

"Have you any idea how hard it is Katniss?"

His nose traced my neck. One hand moved to grip my hip. Our breaths aligned.

"I can and  _can't_  have you. Not even now. Do you know what that does to me? A lot more than what your feverish dreams do to you," he intoned huskily.

I struggled against him.

"Ah yes, I watch you when you sleep. When you have no control of your desires, of what I taught you to feel." His other hand freed my hip and hovered over my skin, almost touching. I felt keenly where we did not meet.

He moved to splay his hand on the planes of my stomach.

"The first time I almost had you, do you remember that? You almost made me  _beg_  for you. It took all of my strength to not continue to ravage you."

His words were inspiring a new ache in me, responding to him, one that could not be doused by my fear.

Peeta gripped my neck, almost in a chokehold, pushing my head to arch back to him.

"I can't want you any more than I do now," he whispered, nuzzling my cheek. His hand swept through my breasts. An ache I could not control pounded hotly.

"You're ripping me," he groaned desperately, "because I tasted your desire in the soft moans you sighed while you dreamt of my touch. I gave it to you once, only briefly, when you said my name. I savored what bloomed between your thighs."

Then I faced him, twisting out of his grip.

I saw him in his true form, like a stain sweeping through a cloth. He was mesmerizing, like the moon that drowned out the stars on a dark night sky, yet I felt nothing but a deep loathing and my pulse hissed in my ears.

I yanked the necklace, the stones spilling into the floor like breaking glass.

I ran away, out the door and into the hall. I barely heard the scream that chased me as I turned sharply to the first door I saw.

It brought me to a dark orchard. The fruits gleamed from the trees.

I ran to the nearest one, stopped, and rested one hand against the rough bark.

_What had I done?_

The events were too fast, the revelations unexpected, the consequences unthinkable.

Peeta, my only friend in the underworld, was the god of the dead. My captor. My aggressor. I brought my other hand to my lips to stifle my anguish. I felt the cool metal of the ring against my skin.

I took it off and hurled it to the darkness.

* * *

She was leaving in a few moments.

He sat in his throne and waited for the messenger of the gods to bring her to the Trivium. The flames crackled in the wall and it was punishing to contain all the emotions that rumbled through him. But he controlled himself.

A low table beside his throne held his cup of Ambrosia, some sliced pomegranates, grapes, and a few figs.

Then he heard the footsteps, two sets, approaching him. They emerged from one of the doors at the far wall.

Katniss was dressed simply, the golden comb he gave absent from her plaited hair.

He beckoned her forward but she remained in her place, as obstinate as ever.

Peeta flicked his eyes at the messenger and he in turn softly nudged Katniss forward. She walked until she was at the top of the steps but did not go any nearer.

He had to get this over soon because another assembly of souls were to be judged.

"Do you know who your true father is, Katniss?" He asked, meeting her gaze coolly.

She did not respond but he continued, not needing any reply from her to keep him from performing his task.

"Well your dear father, the god of harvest, is the one responsible for this arrangement. Instead of letting fate run its course, he had to throw a tantrum to get you back."

Katniss still stared at him.

"So now, it has been agreed between myself and the god of the sky that you shall divide your time between the mortal realm and mine."

Peeta took the goblet of Ambrosia, drank from it, and then walked towards Katniss. He held out the cup to her.

"You had been drinking Ambrosia while in this realm to sustain your immortal side. And now that you have to go back, the Ambrosia will slowly drain from you while in the mortal realm. When it had been fully depleted, that will be the time you return to me, wait until you have taken in your fill again, and then your father can enjoy your presence once more in the mortal realm."

He saw her mind working furiously over what he had explained.

"And why can't I drink the Ambrosia while on the other side?" She asked haughtily.

"Because it cannot be consumed in that realm. Its properties are void there. Your father shall explain more, if you have any questions. Now drink." He gave the goblet to her and went back to the table.

Peeta licked an open pomegranate until a seed rested on the tip of tongue.

"And one more thing," he said as he walked towards her.

She had just drained the goblet and stared at him mutinously.

He brushed his thumb against a drop of liquid at the corner of her lips as he moved his head forward, not breaking the look he fixed her.

He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, parting her mouth, then swooped down to kiss her, sweeping his tongue inside, flicking the lone pomegranate seed. He kissed the bow that crowned her lip, then her lower lip, and finally pulled back. She opened her eyes and swallowed, stunned.

"Now, feel kindly in your heart towards me while you're there," he whispered before sitting back in his throne, triumphant. Even if her godly father withheld her from him, she cannot be kept there, for now she was bound even more to him and to his realm.

The messenger of the gods stepped forward to escort Katniss out. His last vision of her was her swaying braid.

* * *

The dark, deathless horses galloped through the sky.

We were leaving the underworld as we went past the tall mountain I first glimpsed on my way here, the five rivers still flowing majestically.

The messenger of the gods was as rigid as he had been before.

I touched the lip that Peeta kissed. How dare he do this after his deception?

But it did not matter, because now my heart swelled with joy at the thought of seeing my family again, of having my life back. The horses could not run faster and I grew impatient.

The moment I felt the warmth of the sun once more, cloaking my skin in a comforting heat, I sighed in appreciation. The rays warded off the ill feelings I had harbored. I felt a deep hope once more.

The smell of the sea came next, and the salty tang could not be more welcome to my senses.

Next I heard the cries of the sea birds penetrating the morning air. Then the rustle of distant leaves.

I heard life again.

I looked down from the chariot to see the bluest waves and their foamy, white crests.

Then I saw the cliffs of my home ahead. My chest contracted and my heart leapt.

We stopped at the damp sands beneath the cliffs. The messenger of the gods helped me alight and I ran.

I hitched my dress up so I can leap between the rocks. I had been through this route so many times my feet knew where to step. I took in deep gulps of air in my exultation. There were only a few more steps between me and my home, my family.

I saw the salt aged door and the stone walls of our home. The laughter from inside rang in the morning air.

My hand outstretched before me, ready to push the door.

But it opened and revealed a girl I did not recognize.

She had golden hair and pale skin, as tall as me. She was taken aback by my presence.

I wondered who this young woman was.

And then I saw it.

The slopes of her face had been reshaped by maturity, her body sculpted to womanhood. But her eyes were the same, and it broke my heart to realize who she was.

"Prim?" I choked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greek Mythology Notes:
> 
> \- The story that Katniss and Peeta watched through the poet's memories was the story of how the titans Prometheus (forethought) and Epimetheus (afterthought) made the inhabitants of the earth, according to Greek myth. Prometheus was considered as the friend of mankind because he gave them fire. Zeus was displeased with this and he set out to punish mankind as well as Prometheus. For mankind, he created women to tempt them and be the source of all wickedness (I swear I'm not making this up).
> 
> \- In another version of the myth, the gods created the first woman, Pandora, to work mischief for men. Irrepressibly curious, the gods gave her a box that contained the horrors of life, which she opened, thus sentencing humankind to all misfortunes. Her name means "all gifts," both the bad and the good. In yet another version, there was one good thing inside the box, and that was hope.
> 
> \- For the myth of Persephone, there are several versions regarding the part with the pomegranate seed. In mythology, if one had tasted a fruit of the underworld, he or she was bound to it and had to return. In one version, Persephone, stricken with hunger, ate several pomegranate seeds in Hades's orchard. In another version, Hades tricked her into eating pomegranate seeds before she left, the poor girl ignorant of what she was getting herself into. Her time in the mortal realm varies from one version of the myth to another. Some say that the number of pomegranate seeds she ate determined the months she stayed in the mortal realm. Some versions say that this was agreed upon by Hades and Zeus. But for this fanfic, I took liberties to adapt it to the plot I have in my head. I hope you don't mind.


	6. Chapter 6

It had never occurred to me before how light could harshly reveal what one refuses to see, especially now that the morning light passed through all the features of Prim's face, revealing what I had not been here to witness, what I did not want to accept in my shock. Time had schooled it into something both familiar and jaggedly new.

My sister stood still at the door, looking at me with disbelief. I saw her eyes flit over my face as mine scanned hers. Her lips were still like newborn buds, pink and plump. Her hair was like our mother's, flaxen like the cornhusks we used to wrap the mullets and groupers in when we grilled them. Her hand rested against the rough wood, exposing the milky underside of her forearm.

I was unaccustomed to seeing her eyes at the level of my own. My mind's image of her was still that of the girl barely at the bloom of womanhood whom I fought to keep safe.

Now she was older. She was perhaps my age.

My breath hitched as I heard my mother's voice from inside the house, asking my sister who was at their door, their home. Who was intruding into their lives so early in the morning?

I heard feet shuffling and I saw my mother stand beside my sister. The way her dress flowed, the hem by her left foot more soiled than the other, was so essentially my mother that it brought a rush of memories.

But my heart faltered in its rhythm at what time had done to her. Her hair was drained of luster and lines sunk into her skin as she spoke. She had grown thinner, too. There was brittleness in her muscles as she rushed forward to wrap her arms around me. My voice broke as I realized they were frailer than the ones that had embraced me before the Reaping. She smelled the same as I breathed her in, a subtle scent of herbs and fragrant oils, and I was relieved to find that something from my memory remained unchanged.

After cradling my face with her hands, tears at the edge of both our lashes, my mother led me inside to the table where we ate our meals.

They viewed me warily, as though I might disappear, like a dream they stumbled upon and did not want to wake up from.

I looked around the house. My mother's wooden shelves on the wall still stocked her remedies as well as her dried herbs. There were some jars though that I did not recognize. But seeing the familiar, like the stains I made in the linen curtains, brought a faint smile to me.

Prim caught me staring at the bottles again and, with pride, told me that she had been helping our mother make the remedies, an old tradition that ran through my mother's family. I smiled at her. I was glad she had found an occupation.

Mother returned with a golden bottle of honey mead, the special one we only drank when guests were around or if we celebrated. I made a sound of protest but she filled my lacquered cup with the smooth liquid and did the same to hers and Prim's before sitting down.

"Where's father?" I asked, hoping that time had not been unkind to him.

"He rose early to deliver the vases the priest in the temple commissioned," my mother replied quietly, taking a sip of the mead.

My sister stared at her cup.

Mother's hand reached to me. "Where have you been Katniss?" Her voice dragged with hurt.

I collected my thoughts and replied with as much as I could without overwhelming them. My fingers circled the rim of my cup. The song of birds rippled the morning air from outside.

"I was never sacrificed to the god of the dead. He took me to the underworld, to his realm, alive. And now he has allowed me time to spend with you here in the mortal world. How long have I been away?" I steeled my stomach for their answer.

My mother leaned back and looked at me with pain. "Five years," she whispered.

My breath clumped heavily in my chest. I had lost five years with my family. They had lived five years without me.

"It hasn't been that long for me," I replied, the words in an uphill climb against my throat.

We were silent again. I felt their eyes on me as the depth of what I had lost dawned. They exchanged looks that perhaps I should not have seen when my eyes flitted to them. It was painful to see that they now felt awkward and unsure around me. Far too many things had changed in those five years.

My mother took another sip from her cup. So did my sister. So did I.

There was an urgent knock at the door that sliced through the taut air and Prim bolted up to answer it. Someone from the city was asking for help because a man was severely injured from one of the ships in the port. I now felt like a guest in my own home as my mother and sister focused on the task, talking intently over what to do. This was something important to them, I knew. I was jealous of the bond they shared. I watched as Prim swirled around the house, fetching various herbs and pastes and preparing concoctions while my mother gave her instructions. Mother sat down at the table again and smiled at me. I smiled weakly back.

I knew it was unfair of me to demand their attention but I had been so eager to see them again. So instead, I placed my hand over my mother's and told her she was free to go where she was needed, that I could wait. She pressed a light kiss on my forehead as Prim approached her.

Recognizing my disappointment of my family's reaction prompted me to look outside, where the sun brightened the sky. There was a time in my childhood when I'd once found a shiny rock in the sand. It was unusual. It changed colors depending on the light. It was unique. It was my treasure. So I buried it in the meadow so no one would find it. But when I dug it out again, it was not there anymore. I dug around the area but it was not to be found. Yet to my delight, I found another rock like it, washed ashore, to replace what I had lost. I did not bury it anymore and kept it in one of my father's jars. When the rain had come, it washed the soil from our meadow. A day after the rains had abated, I saw my old rock again. There was the initial delight of seeing my treasure again, then a pondering of what to do with it since it had been replaced.

Only now, I had not been replaced, and it hurt more because instead, their hearts had shrunk, the space for me had been claimed by sorrow, with only the memory of me still living for them.

I was a stranger to my family.

As this realization sunk in, my heart broke, even more so as I saw the truth in my mother's eyes as she looked at me one more time, a sense of sadness and regret washing over her face.

As I looked at their retreating figures, I realized I was left alone once more but in a greater sense than before. I was at the end of a rapidly fraying rope I desperately clutched to. This was yet another aspect of my life I had to let go of, again, even if I had only just rediscovered it.

So I ran to the woods where I mourned the specter my life had become.

* * *

The warm sun I had yearned for still shone through the leaves in the same way, still seared past my closed eyes, leaving my dark sight aglow. I lay in the woods behind my home. The smells and sounds were as I remembered them. The soft, cool earth was my bed and my worn sandals were my pillow, just as that day of my reaping.

I was alone. And it would perpetually be this way now that I walked in two worlds, in the underworld where my family could not reach me, and in the mortal realm where I would see what our time apart had done to them. We had become strangers, the truth sinking in slowly in my chest and forcing a tear out of my closed eyes.

I did not want to go back to our home yet. It felt cold now, and foreign. The woods were my only sanctuary.

Then a rustle of leaves and twigs forced my eyes open.

I sat up abruptly, warily. If there was a fox, I had to be careful.

But I saw a stag, proud, majestic, and crowned with its high antlers, framed among the trees. It looked at me, beckoning me without sound, and with a graceful turn, its muscles propelled it further into the forest away from me.

I stood up and followed it. This was the first time I had seen a stag like that.

It led me deeper into the silent woods. My feet crunched against the dried leaves, reminding me of the white ones in the underworld. The barks of the trees were thinner, spindlier, and I squeezed through them as I followed the sound of the stag's hooves.

Then the woods cleared to a golden meadow, bigger than the one I grew up with. My eyes had to adjust to the bright sun that soaked the tall, swaying stalks of wheat.

Then I saw a man in the middle, sitting on a lone rock with his back to me. Furry hares, russet sparrows, and the gossamer flutter of butterflies surrounded him. Deer and pheasants also skimmed by his feet. His tunic was the color of a starless sky.

This man stood up, and after petting a deer calf, turned to face me. His dark hair, half held up, was the same color as mine. His eyes were the color of flint, but they regarded me kindly. The upper bow of his lip was a mirror of my own.

I walked to where he stood and he smiled as I neared.

"Katniss," he greeted in welcome. His voice enveloped me like a gentle breeze.

"I am your father, the god of the harvest," he continued warmly.

When I did not reply, he carried on, "It pleases my heart that I can see you again, my child, that you are away from the realm of souls." He tucked the hair the wind blew behind my ears, a gesture my mother used when I was younger.

He led me by my arm to the rock and I sat. My immortal father produced a smooth, ripe plum and offered it to me while still he was standing. The hares by my feet played with my dress. It seemed as if I was living in a dream.

I took the plum and ate it as I viewed his profile. My immortal father's countenance bore none of the coiled energy I sensed in Peeta's. He was even-tempered, but I still found myself speechless in his presence.

"Perhaps you are wondering why I have only seen you now," he said as he took a seat. I nodded.

"It was wise of your mother to never have told you about me. I also would not have wanted you to feel different as you grew up. But I have always watched over you, Katniss, even if I have resolved to not reveal myself to you until your mortal thread was cut, leaving you only with your immortal strand. It was my plan that when you had been freed of your mortal binds, that would be the time I would unveil myself to you so I could bring you up to Olympus to aid me with my duty to the earth and to the seasons. You are my child of spring, Katniss."

The leaves rustled as I found my voice, despite the weight of what he had revealed, "But that was not to be, and we find ourselves in a different circumstance now."

I paused before I continued. My hand gathered my dress into my fist.

"The god of the dead said that I was now to divide my time between the two worlds."

He nodded grimly. "Yes. When I found out what you had done, that you had bravely chosen to take your sister's place as sacrifice, I knew you would capture the attention of the god of the dead. I knew he would be fascinated, as we immortals do not put much value in mortal dealings; but what you did was an exception. And I had to find a way to bring you back. I despaired at the thought of what had happened to you. I am not proud of the famine I brought to the earth but I needed the god of the sky to consider my case. In exchange for the land's fruitfulness, I asked for your presence here. I would not allow my only daughter to languish in the underworld, and that's why you are here now," he said quietly.

"Couldn't you have gone to the underworld then?" I asked.

"It's not my realm, my child, and I would need the permission of its master to enter. Of course, his possessive temperament and the conflict of interest would be enough for the god of the dead, host of the many to deny me entrance," he replied, smiling grimly.

"What about the Ambrosia? How long can I remain here?" I asked again, remembering what Peeta mentioned.

"Ah yes," he continued while a sparrow perched itself in his arm. "It has been agreed that you will spend a season here in the mortal realm. The Ambrosia you consumed will slowly seep out of you as you are exposed to mortal sustenance. Then you will return to the god of the dead, replenishing your immortal side with nine goblets of Ambrosia before you can return here. This will be the cycle from now on."

I sat up stiffly. I remembered the most crucial and painful detail. "What about the time that passes?"

The god of the harvest looked at me with sadness and replied, "The temporal flow in the two worlds is dissimilar, especially when you cross the boundaries. It is the way of the world, my child."

He saw my tortured expression, the agonized quivering of my lips, for he added to placate me, "I did the best I could, Katniss, but you had bound yourself unequivocally to the god of the dead—"

"And so you curse me to this half life!" I said, rising from my seat, my despair surging. "I will remain unchanged while everything I know and everyone I love leaves me behind, until I walk this realm alone. Oh you immortals are all the same. You think of  _nothing_  but yourselves," I whispered, almost crying, as I faced him. My fists were clenched at my sides.

"I implore you to trust my judgment that this is better than an eternity in the underworld. You will soon see things as I do," he told me calmly.

I stood there, silent, my eyes blazing. Another thought caught fire in my mind.

"And what of my mother? Was she a selfish whim as well for you?" I whipped out bitterly.

My immortal father looked at me as the sparrow flew away. "No. I loved your mother then and there is not a moment that I do not think of her, and you."

"Did you force her to love you? How did your paths even cross?" I asked cautiously, curiously. This had always been the part of my life that remained cloaked in mystery and ambiguity since my mother never told me who my true father was.

He smiled wistfully. "She was lost in the woods one day and came across this meadow. She heard me singing to the birds, and she too stopped to listen. She was a woman of such purity that I was besotted. But it was not our fate to be together, so I led your mortal father to her and I asked the goddess of love to slowly wipe your mother's love for me so she could have a family, a life uninterrupted. And though it pained me to see that her longing for me lessened as the seasons went by, I could still take comfort in knowing that our union bore you, my daughter, whom I love more than anything. I have always watched you and guided you every moment of your life. It pained me to see you take your sister's place and I feared you were lost to me," he said tenderly, the love of a father shining in his gentle eyes.

And I began to remember my times in these woods, of all the animals that played with me, unafraid and tickled with young innocence. And I also remembered that time, in the agora, when I, too, was lost. My parents bartered with the vendors and I wandered to the other stalls. I looked back and could not find my way to my mother and father. The grown men and women just passed me, crowding me. But my parents searched tirelessly for me, enlisting the help of neighbors and strangers, until I was found, sitting by the temple steps. My mother knelt before me, her face etched in relief, as she gathered me into her arms.

Now I understood my immortal father's actions as I was lost to him in the underworld, but I did not know if I was to feel gratitude for it as I remembered my predicament.

I looked at him again and drained the blame from my eyes.

He bent his knees to stand up and addressed me. "Now go, my child, for you have too few moments with your family. I shall see you again."

I nodded and looked to my feet. But when I looked up, the god of the harvest was gone.

* * *

Since I arrived, the days had flowed into the nights and the darkness bended to the light in its eternal dance, continuously and without much excitement. I wanted to ask my mother about my immortal father, but after hearing what the god of the harvest said, I knew it might cause more pain for her, so I decided not to, yet. I swayed around my family with my chores at home. I helped clean. I picked the herbs with my sister for our mother. I cooked. They talked. They laughed. They tried to include me, always, but I usually stayed in the corner mending my dress, watching as though they were birds singing in trees.

We did this again and again, like a song in the early evening. I was careful not to grow too close to them, for this was all temporary, and I did not want to be crushed by grief again. Time rolled in and out of me, unappreciated, as I was made more aware of what was robbed from me.

One day, when it had all been too much, like the relentless tide, I left our home to walk to my father's pottery shop along the path that led to the main road at the back of our home. The gravel crunched under my feet and I could smell the earth panting its need for rain.

It was as I remembered it, dusty and filled with vases, warm from its kiln, with my father's old wooden stool in the middle. It was where he sat now.

He heard me approaching and he smiled at me. I had forgotten how a smile can transform my father's face. His weather-beaten skin glowed and his lines receded to push out his smile. His beard was unruly, like untended weeds.

I had not been here since I returned, and I remembered how much I loved helping my father. Prim had always been better at recognizing the herbs our mother needed. It was the first time I had seen my father shed tears when he saw me again, fetched excitedly by my mother and Prim.

The kiln was already quietly purring to my father's front. All the other vases my father had not sold flanked it. Mounds and mounds of clay filled the space on the other wall. I set out for it, remembering how to clean the clay of its impurities before it can be molded.

We worked silently, my father painting the vases he had finished before and me cleaning. Then my father moved on to shape the clay I had already cleaned. It was merely a lump at first, spinning under his hand, his foot tapping to increase the spin of the wheel and his hands cupping the glossy mound. And then slowly, he began to shape the clay. It was always during that time that I stopped with my work and watched, fascinated, as he molded it into the body of the vase.

He had taught me how to shape the vases before, but I was never as skilled as he. My work was always only passable. But I saw his hands shaking then, and I knew that the smallest mistake would send the sensitive clay shrinking. Before it could go awry, I covered my father's hands with mine, helping him reshape it.

He looked up at me. His small smile was tinged with other emotions too hurtful to probe into, like how we had both become acquainted strangers and we did not know how to begin dealing with it. It was partially my fault, too, since I kept myself away from them.

When his hands had steadied, I left him to return to my chair, to watch after I had cleaned my hands.

The sunlight was by my father's feet. In an hour, it would cover both of us as the morning aged. It would shine on our bodies's imperfections, the scars on our skin and the roughness a sharp wind leaves behind. My father had more of those.

As he worked on another lump of clay, my eyes skimmed over the finished pots by the oven. They were not new and they had a thin layer of dust coating their glaze. I had not seen many of these and I did not remember his shop being filled with them.

They were not large, but most were exquisitely painted, more detailed than his vases that were prized by the city officials and temple priests. I could tell he spent too much time on them. They were all of a girl I knew, with two braids instead of one. She was being taught by her mother to write on one small vase and she was running around with her sister on another. I saw her as my father saw her. Precious. Loved. Never forgotten.

Then my father hummed a tune, and I sang along with him. It was the same tune we always used when working together. I was pleased that my father was busy, because I did not want him to see what was shining in my eyes as I appraised the other vases. One had a girl lying on her stomach in the meadow by our house. Another one had her holding two vases in her plump arms. I used my sleeve to wipe the tear that slid down my cheek.

I walked toward the kiln and began to put more wood in, knowing it was nearly time to fire the clays as my father painted them. I felt the temperature, and it was not enough, so I went outside and gathered more wood. On my third trip as I went inside, my father was assembling the clays inside the kiln. I left this task to him and I proceeded to clean up his shop. We moved around one another as comfortable as we had always been.

When the vases were ready, my father pulled out the first one we worked on, the one I helped him with as his hands trembled, the one we saved.

He had painted a girl standing on the edge of a cliff with a lone braid swinging in the wind as she looked out to the sea. She wore the dress my mother dyed to be the color of leaves at the height of autumn. Her back was to us and she stood stiffly as though she was waiting and waiting.

My father handed it to me once it had cooled. It had a shiny veneer on its surface. I placed it down on my chair and moved to help my father close his shop. The sun was already hanging low in the sky when I went out to pile the logs.

When we were finished, my father took the vase he painted for me. It was his gift to me, he said, for returning. There was joy in his eyes as he said this. I felt a pang of guilt, for while I was wallowing for the time that I could never retrieve, I had not thought of how my family had felt. I had focused my mind on distancing myself, so guarded of my feelings, that I failed to be with my family. I wanted to change that.

"Thank you, father, it's beautiful" I murmured.

He looked at me and agreed, "Yes, beautiful." He tucked my hair behind my ear and nipped my chin with his finger before he turned toward the road.

* * *

I found myself growing closer to my sister again.

We talked to each other more, in the mornings, during meals, and at night, just as we used to. We ventured into the agora once to buy vegetables for supper and to trade some of our father's vases. No one recognized me there. I was supposed to be dead anyway. We were only two women bartering.

The city was the same, nestled between the lips of the gorge. People still bumped into us in the market, our feet were battered, and the bustle closed in on us. Vendors shouted and buyers haggled. Children wedged in and out of the adults, playing and screeching. The god of the dead's statue still hovered, although now I knew it was not built to his likeness. The statue had no waves in his hair and was not stocky in build.

My sister chatted idly beside me as we navigated the onslaught of the morning goers. I carried the basket filled with produce while she held the vases in her arms and the pouch of silver drachmas. I still marveled at how we were now of the same height.

We never went to the temple atop the gorge. It was too painful and I would rather not see the priests and that old seer.

At night, we slept on the same bed, as though nothing had changed. I had hinted that I would be fine sleeping elsewhere, but Prim insisted.

And now, as the smoke from the candles had vanished and the only light came from the moon that was perched high outside, Prim nudged me and asked if I was awake.

I heard a cricket sing and an owl hoot before I turned to her.

I was shocked to see her crying. My hand immediately went to her face, my brows furrowed in worry.

"Katniss, I should never have let you volunteer for me," she whispered.

"Prim, please—"

"No!" she almost shouted, startling me. "Look what I've done! Look at what it did to you," she cried brokenly, her face crumpling and receding into lines of guilt and sorrow.

I sat up and tucked her into me and she cried, as though she was still the young girl I protected. I knew I would never stop looking out for her.

When she had calmed down and my chin did not quiver anymore from her cries, I pulled her back and spoke to her.

"Prim, listen to me."

She wiped the last tear with the back of her hand.

"I would never have forgiven myself if I had let you suffer and die alone, if I had let you go through the horrible sacrifice that I witnessed. There was to be no other way but this, but what has been done. And I would do it again if I had to." And it was my voice that shook now as I looked at my sister.

She looked down to her folded hands. "It was so awful, after you left," she confessed. "Mother was devastated. She would not eat. She grew so thin that I could wrap my hand around her arm. And father was so lost. He would stay in his shop and only return for supper. I did not know what to do," she said, with a sniffle. "So I just kept on doing our chores. I kept the house tidy. I cooked, I traded, until they both came back to me. And I missed you, so much, every day."

I felt her wrap her arms around me. She was still the young girl I knew as I stroked her honey-toned hair. She was a girl forced to mature much too soon. And so I let her cry some more, let her unburden her sadness, her frustrations, her fears, until her sobs turned to hiccups and the wet patch on my tunic where her tears fell had dried.

I stopped weaving my fingers through her hair and she looked up. I told her to remain where she was as I fetched her a cup of water.

When she had finished her drink, she asked me, "How have you been, Katniss?"

I thought of the lonely underworld, its ever-present mists, its white leaves on the trees, and its dark master. I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I did not hear Prim ask another question.

"What's the god of the dead like?" she asked suddenly, in an undertone ripe with inquisitiveness.

I snapped my eyes back to her. How would I answer her question? I did not know where to begin.

"Well? Did you even see him? Did he take you to Olympus?" Prim's eyes were now sparkling, filled with all the tales we had heard in the amphitheatre. I took her cup away and bent down to place it on a tray by the floor.

"He's… He's… golden," I finished lamely, unsurely, as I came back up.

Prim's brow wrinkled in confusion.

"I mean he has golden hair."

"Is he like the statue?"

"No…" and then something about the season and the statue and the temple earlier crashed inside me, prompting me to ask with urgency.

"Prim, what happened to the sacrifice?"

She was taken aback by the turn in our conversation. Her eyes looked to the side before she answered me. "It stopped, after you."

"How…" I stammered.

"Well, none of the priests returned, those who accompanied you. And then the following year, the fire would not burn blue. We were all there by the temple steps for hours and then days but nothing happened. Then the city officials and high priest decided to put a stop to it. It went like this for a few more years before the sacrifice was halted completely."

Her revelation was so staggering that I was unable to move.

"You saved us, Katniss," my sister added quietly.

As her words embedded in me, I realized there would be no more poor maidens savagely killed in the heart of a volcano. There would be no more maidens dreading the return of the summer, no more maidens with nightmares of the sacrifice. There would be no more Iphigenias and Amyntas. There would be no more of what I originally despised the gods for.

Then the tips of my fingers began to ache from gripping the thin cotton sheet of our bed tightly. I was silent, and then Prim yawned. She told me to get some rest as she lay down onto the bed again and turned to her side.

But I could not sleep. My mind was thinking, shooting into different things, to what Peeta had done, to everything.

When I was sure I would not get any rest lying in bed, I went out of our house and into the meadow. The stars had all come out at this hour, twinkling feebly in the inky sky.

I lay in the meadow, the smell of the earth a comfort, remembering the bed of grass I had in the underworld.

I thought of Peeta, not the dark god who had deceived me, who had nearly ravished me with his unrestrained lust, but the one I had come to know, who had come to me during those silent moments in the underworld with an easy smile, who showed me the memories and his favorite tales, and listened to the stories of my life.

And I saw him as he was, a goodness that wrapped around a darkness. He was as scarred as the fiercest warrior yet capable of being gentle and giving like a trusting child.

I accepted it, all that he was, as imperfect as I was.

A breeze carried a sweet scent to my nose. I lifted my head to see a flower sprouting from the ground beside me in the middle of the darkness. It grew and grew, the stem, then the bud, then the white petals. It opened and bloomed. I remembered this flower; it's the same one Peeta had given me as an apology before he first took me to see the memories.

I plucked the flower and inhaled its scent. I laid back on my stomach, twirling the flower between my fingers as my legs curled towards my back. I stared at it until my eyes drooped sleepily. Then I rested my head in my arms.

I knew that dawn had come when the light shone from outside my eyes lightly. I woke slowly, and the sweet smell became stronger. My eyes adjusted to the light and they saw color, reds and violets. I thought this odd, for nothing ever grew in this meadow behind our home.

But when the fog of sleep had lifted, I saw it more clearly. Our meadow was dotted with the same small blossoms I had come to be fond of in the Elysian Fields. They grew in small, soft clusters plush against the green grass.

And there were more of the white flowers too. They bloomed around me as I slept, their exquisite petals lapping the dews of the morning.

I sat up and looked around at our transformed meadow. My sister would love this, too. I gathered the white flowers, intent on placing them in our home so their sweet smell could bring life inside.

And as I plucked the last flower, I knew.

He watched over me.

* * *

And then, sadly, the season had sprinted to its end.

While Prim and I cleaned the table from our supper, I sensed a movement from outside our window. I told my sister I would return and fetched my father's thin cape before pushing the heavy door aside.

I smiled when I saw a colony of rabbits sprinting from the grass, greeting me, and fetching me for my immortal father. The last time was a pair of foxes and before that, a flock of turtledoves. I scooped up one of the bunnies, its gray fur tickling the back of my hand as it nestled against me. I followed the rabbits to the deeper woods and into the bigger meadow.

It looked different at night but the god of the harvest still stood by the same rock where we talked before. The stalks of wheat shook as the rabbits made their way out of the meadow and I placed the bunny down so it could scamper with its brothers.

I knew my father was here to tell me that it was time to return to the underworld, to Peeta. I knew it when the dryness of the air had disappeared and in its place that soft chill that came first in the night. A different anxiety strung my body at the thought of meeting Peeta again.

The god of the harvest turned to me, his eyes as sharp as an eagle in the moonlight.

"You know what is coming?"

"Yes," I replied softly, looking down.

In truth, I did not want to part from this world any more than I wanted to die when I volunteered for my sister. But I knew what must be done, even though I did not want to leave my family again. I had told them that the time was nearing. I feared more what I would come back to, here, later. But I had to go, just as the leaves had to fall from trees and return to the earth at the end of their season.

Driven by a last shimmer of hope, I looked up and asked my father again.

"Is there no other way for me to stay?" I pleaded.

He knew I was asking it for my family and not for his benefit. We did not yet share that closeness but I at least trusted him with this quiet confession.

My father wiped the lone tear that had just fallen. "My child, I would have already found a way if there was one. Fate has played us all a curious hand and we must all live by it. I'm afraid you are more connected to the god of the dead now, especially since you have tasted a fruit from his realm."

I did not understand. I only drank Ambrosia there, I told him.

My father smiled sadly at me. "He must have slipped it by you. When you taste a fruit of the underworld, you are obligated to return to it. Now you are bound to both the god and to his realm."

And then I remembered, that time before I left him. The pomegranate by his throne, cut open, its plump red seeds swelling forth. And the kiss.

My teeth gritted against my jaw.

"It happens tomorrow evening, Katniss. This place. The messenger, the herald of the gods, shall fetch you here," he said when I stayed quiet.

There was a cold fury that coursed through my veins at yet another of Peeta's deceptions.

My immortal father disappeared when I was not looking, leaving me to walk back alone to my home. He had left hooting owls to guide me back through the dark woods and all I had to do was follow their sounds.

When I returned home, the house was bereft of candlelight, but I did not mind. I would rather they not waste a necessity at my expense. I found the vase containing the white flowers that did not wilt, the ones that bloomed in the meadow while I slept. I tread quietly out of the house, making sure the door made as little noise as possible.

I knew he was watching me.

I walked to the cliffs and threw the flowers over it, hoping it would hit the jagged rocks or would get washed out far into the night, scattered, unlike the disappointment that scored deep through me.

* * *

I told my family the following morning that I would be leaving them that night.

They nodded gravely in understanding. I knew my mother wanted to make a fuss but I told her not to. But my father also insisted, saying that he had already traded three of his vases for lamb, to be eaten when this time came.

This brought me back to that day of the Reaping, when my father tried to console me with my favorite meat.

I spent the day helping my mother grind the different herbs together to form a paste that she used to treat common wounds. In the late afternoon, while my mother and Prim were busying themselves in the kitchen and refusing my offer to help, I trudged to my father's pottery shop to see if I could assist with anything. He let me paint again. And I had not improved much since he first taught me. Still, he looked over my work with a tender smile and a kiss on the forehead and said that they would place it in the house to remember me until I came back.

We went back to the house together, with me aiding my father so he might not trip over a sharp stone in the darkness. My sight was still better than his. He went inside the house while I remained outside, standing by the cliff. I could smell what they were cooking and it prompted an embarrassing noise from my belly.

Standing there, looking out at the black sea sliced by a sliver of moonlight, I recounted what I would leave behind: the salty smell that weighed the air down, the moon and its dance with the sun, the feeling of warmth or coldness. There were many, I thought, as I saw a ship sail in the distance. I heard a rumble of laughter from the shore below, carried by the wind. I would miss those sounds too, the sound of the presence of other living beings.

My thoughts were interrupted once my father called me, telling me that supper was ready.

The lamb smelled divine, its browned skin studded with rosemary from a patch found by Prim and sprinkled simply with salt. We feasted on it and drank wine diluted with water. We laughed and talked as though the night would not bring the dreaded time when we would have to part. It was the inverse of what my parents did at the Reaping before. They enticed us then with what was to come after the Reaping so the present would not be so harrowing. Now they made the present delightful so the future would not be unbearable.

But the time had come, too soon, as it always did.

I heard a whistle of birdsong and I knew it was a signal from the god of the harvest.

I told my family again. They sought to accompany me but I told them I had to do this alone. I did not think I could part with them if they walked me to the woods.

Both my parents held me close and I felt a tightness coil in my throat and a stinging in my eyes. I held my sister firmly afterwards and told her to take care of our mother and father, as she had done before. I told them I would think of them, the only comfort I could assure them now.

I crossed the threshold of the door while they were left behind. The smell of the sea was stronger and I heard it lap against the sand.

I looked back at my family, to my father's kind eyes, my mother's tight smile, and my sister's bright skin. I memorized all their faces, letting it sear into my mind.

I knew that from now on, I would race them, always, for time, but I would always fall behind.

I felt that familiar sadness that pulled me to the earth once more.

* * *

It was the air that changed first, and I knew we were in the underworld again.

The frightfully tall mountain where the five rivers flowed stood in the distance and the deathless horses galloped toward it before the chariot lurched upward.

The horses landed at its summit, sparsely littered with spindly trees of bright yellow leaves. The messenger helped me down from the chariot and guided me towards the door. I presumed this led to Peeta's Trivium.

And there he was, at the top of the stone steps, with the walls licked by the white flames. My eyes had to adjust to the change in light once we stepped through the door.

I carried my anger and disappointment over his deception with the pomegranate. It built and built, like a boulder that tumbled down the mountain. It made my tread heavy as I walked towards his throne where he sat stiffly. His face was neutral and his blue eyes followed me as I approached him. The messenger did not walk with me up the steps.

This immortal was an enigma. It was as though I'd cracked through a vase, believing I finally understood him, only to find another hard vessel within.

When I reached the top of the steps, his eyes were still on me. I tried reading his expression and I deciphered amusement, which annoyed me. Then the expression melted into gladness, as though he was pleased to see me. I narrowed my eyes at this, and immediately, his eyes hooded up in defense as well.

Peeta took the goblet from the table beside his throne, dressed with fruits and a dagger for cutting like before.

"Welcome back," he said coolly, handing me the goblet while still sitting. "Your immortal side must be parched."

I drained the Ambrosia, satiating a thirst I only felt when it touched my lips. I handed it back to Peeta, who refilled it for himself.

"I've watched you, and I know you're  _dying_  to know. So ask it," he bit out, his voice lilting seductively, alluringly, like dark honey.

He drank from the same goblet, looking at me from behind the rim.

I straightened up and focused. "Why did you bring me here? Why didn't you tell me who you were? And why the pomegranate?"

He looked at me, amused.

"It's not funny," I said, drawing closer and sweeping the table so the fruits scattered and my hand wrapped around the hilt of the dagger.

Fast as a snake, his hand gripped the wrist attached to my hand holding the dagger, but not too tight. I could still move my arm. And I directed my hand to his neck.

"Will you bleed?" I asked.

"Those are four questions already, woman," he said, pulling me by my arm so I stood between his thighs.

"Answer them all," I demanded.

"But the better question is, will you trust the answers I give you?"

"Answer them still," I said, pressing the blade to his neck.

His chest grumbled deeply as he laughed before his expression turned serious, his eyes never letting mine go. "I brought you here because I wanted to know you. I deceived you because I could. I gave you the pomegranate because you're mine." His other hand was at that curve in my back, pushing me closer to him. His hand that held my wrist slipped to touch the blade at his neck.

His answers nettled me. "I don't belong to anyone," I whispered defiantly. His face tilted to the side.

"That's where you're wrong, Katniss. You belong to me," he purred in a low tone as his eyes bore deeper into mine.

I pressed the blade more.

"But mostly," he continued, undeterred, "I really wanted to know how you would react, what effect it would have on you."

"And what did you find out?" I asked, playing his little game.

"Very little," he answered bluntly, his eyes traced the slope of my cheek down to my lips.

"Well, I beat you," I said, feeling the fury again that only he could ignite. "I know you. Your trick with the pomegranate was despicable," I spat out as his hands moved to my waist. The blade remained by his neck so that if pressed a little more, it would cut him.

"No," he breathed out, "You know nothing." One of his fingers swiped over the bone in my left hip. His breath moved against my chest.

"No,  _you_  know nothing!" I said, vehemently, fighting the clouds in my mind. "What do you know of life? Of our ways? Of love? When are you invoked? You know only fear."

He was breathing raggedly now, preparing to explode in the temper I knew so well, but he restrained it. His voice was controlled when he spoke.

"How about your last question?" His thighs moved to herd me in.

The blade trembled in my hand.

"Go on, see if I bleed," he said. My eyes moved to his mouth as his tongue darted out to moisten his lips.

I looked again at him. Our eyes locked and I pressed the blade forward until his flesh gave in. A warm liquid spilled onto my fingers. I nudged the blade more and I saw him close his eyes and his nostrils flared. More liquid seeped down my arm.

My eyes widened when I looked down at the color. He really was golden. The fluid was lighter than blood's flow. I swallowed. Then he spoke.

"No mortal can cut an immortal. And I bleed ichor, not blood." One hand slipped up the back of my thigh. His hands and arms were caging me in.

So I swiped the blade down and they freed me. I stumbled back. Peeta hissed and his eyes narrowed to slits in ire.

I dropped the blade and ran out the door of his Trivium.

* * *

I entered the third door at random, my heart still racing in my chest.

I was immediately greeted by frost so I took a step back into the endless hall. I chose the door across.

An orchard was before me. Apples and pears hung from their trees. They were all ripe and enticing, their scent sweet and heady.

I walked to the nearest tree and held my hand out under a plump apple. It fell to my palm. The aroma became stronger and I had an urge to bite.

I did, since I was already bound here anyway. The taste was intensely sweet in my tongue, unlike any apple I had tasted. But a bite was all I needed. Its essence still lingered on my tongue long after I had swallowed.

I sat inside the shade of the tree. I tried not to think of what had happened, but I couldn't. It was as though his eyes were still trained on me. I felt as though if I looked over my shoulder, he would be there looking back. I took the ribbon that tied my hair and braided it instead, looking for something to do, to occupy me.

I was restless but tired since I hadn't slept. Yet I did not feel drowsy so I paced around the orchard, finding other apples and pears of different sizes and colors. I tasted some as I continued to think.

Avoiding Peeta was impossible, that I knew and could not escape from. We were too tied to each other.

But the prospect of eternity, of skirting around one another, entered my mind and it did not appeal to me. I knew my unstable existence needed to be calmed. I was tired of being angry with Peeta. It took so much from me.

As soon as I accepted it, it was as though my mind had stopped swirling, like the stale air of the past had washed away. I would have to move forward, there was no other way. I would not live in spite.

I knew what I needed to do.

* * *

Peeta retreated near the summit of the mountain where the five rivers flowed. He sat where the river of lamentation fell, its spray sending a light mist to hit him where he sat.

He knew she walked the adamantine hall right now, lost and seeking him.

He let her wander some more, turning his attention back to the lyre he was playing. It was a gift from the god of light, bearer of prophecy, for losing a wager they had set. He spent most of the time in Olympus when Katniss was away, only coming back when the souls needed to be judged. The underworld felt too vast without Katniss. There was never a moment when he did not watch over her or sense what she was doing while in the mortal realm, enabling him to send the flowers at the most opportune time that she was thinking kindly of him. The other immortals found his visits unexpected, but not unwelcome. His brother, the heir of the trident, vowed Peeta's entertainment his priority when he visited Olympus, but Peeta declined, preferring to engage the other gods in conversation instead. This earned a smirk from his other brother, the god of the sky. They all asked about Katniss, scoffing at his fascination, but he ignored them. He was also secretly quite glad he did not run into the god of harvest.

His hand touched his neck where Katniss had cut him. It did not hurt anymore, of course, but it still surprised him that she swiped the blade deeply.

 _Foolish girl_ , he thought.

It irked him. No, it infuriated him.

And it excited him too.

She was a spitfire, surprising for one who spent a lot of her time here wallowing in the beginning.

Peeta sensed her seeking him still. He rolled his eyes before asking a servant to finally lead her to where he was, lest she mistakenly get herself into the pit of Tartarus; he was not in the mood to go there now.

Even if her tread was quiet, he still heard her approaching.

He continued to play the lyre, a simple set of notes the messenger, the herald of the gods, taught him, ignoring Katniss as she neared him.

"I need to talk to you," she said simply, without any preamble, any apology.

Peeta held his hand up to stop her from talking further. "Listen first," he said, letting the plectrum pick against the lyre's strings. She exhaled impatiently but he continued the song. She tried to interrupt again but he only shushed her.

As the song drew to a close, he spoke, "Your souls were born to respond to music. Tell me, in your haste to survive, when did you shed your sense of wonder?" he said, finally turning to her. "And you think I know nothing of your life. I know a great deal about humans, Katniss. We immortals once lived among your kind, all of us, after the divine war. And I've watched the souls have their lives recounted before being judged. So can you still say I am ignorant?" Peeta asked.

She stared stonily at him. Her pride would not let her admit defeat.

"What did you come here for?" he asked, standing up and setting the lyre and the plectrum down. He walked to her.

"I came to propose something," Katniss answered, taking a step back and swallowing. She always did that when he neared her. It was nearly as much fun as watching her sleep.

But Peeta stopped just far enough away to let her think unimpeded.

She exhaled and looked him straight in the eye. "I propose a truce."

That was unexpected.

"A truce." He tilted his chin to the side. The word rolled off his tongue uneasily. It was foreign to him. He saw her observing his expression.

Katniss taunted him. "Oh, is that something you didn't know humans were capable of? That there's another way apart from victory or defeat?"

"And why should I agree?" Peeta said, stepping closer, the muscles at his nape tensing. He prepared to strike her proposal down but she was much quicker with her words.

"We can't hate each other forever. Since we'll be  _existing_  together, we can't continue like this—"

"Watch me," he interrupted her, sneering, adding another step closer.

"No!" she said passionately. Her face was all worked up. "You're not evil. I know that." She looked straight into him. She repeated her words again, that he was not evil, perhaps trying to convince him.

Peeta was surprised again. His brothers would laugh at him if they knew what this girl was doing to him.

"I've been thinking, in that orchard of yours. I can't keep staring at the past, living in it, clinging to it, and letting it dictate what I do. I want to turn to a different direction now and face towards the future. And I will need this truce from you in order to do that," she confessed vulnerably, lowering her head down and playing with her hands.

Peeta looked across his realm. The water from the river was the only sound apart from their breathing.

His hand reached out to touch her chin and tilted her face gently upwards. Her eyes began to shrink back as he pierced them with his own before replying.

"A truce then," he acquiesced quietly, touching the end of her braid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greek Mythology Notes:  
> \- Ichor, in mythology, is said to be the fluid that runs through the veins of the gods instead of blood.
> 
> \- The lyre is closely associated with Apollo but its invention is credited to Hermes. It was the messenger god's peace offering to Apollo after pulling a trick on him.
> 
> \- In mythology, after the divine war with the Titans ended, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades drew lots on who would rule over which territory. Zeus reigned over the sky, Poseidon reigned over the sea, and Hades ruled over the underworld. The common territories for the gods were Mt. Olympus and the mortal realm.
> 
> \- In the myth of Persephone, after Hades abducted her, Demeter searched the earth for her but could not find her. When the sun god Helios told her that he had seen her be taken by the god of the dead, Demeter fell into depression because she cannot go to the underworld since that was Hades's territory. She brought famine to the earth and nothing would grow. Zeus interfered when it was getting out of hand and the mortals were dying. Zeus and Hades had come to the agreement that Persephone would spend part of her time in the underworld and part of her time in the mortal realm so Demeter could go see her. The Greeks used this mythology to explain the seasons. When Persephone was in the underworld, Demeter would mourn this and bring barrenness to the land, hence there's winter. When Persephone rises from the underworld, she brings spring with her and the fruitfulness of the land returns. Of course, I made my own twists to the mythology.


	7. Chapter 7

The end of my braid fell back to my shoulder as I absorbed what Peeta said. He had agreed to my truce. I had expected more resistance from him and I had prepared myself for more arguments but after his initial refusal, none came. I did not know whether to be elated or wary.

I watched Peeta's hand slowly return to his side. He was perhaps waiting for me to respond. I wanted to reach out to his hand, a sign of goodwill, of newfound friendship. I had no words yet. So I lifted my eyes to look at him, and swallowed a gasp.

His eyes were hardened pools of blue and they rooted me to the soft earth. They probed me. They made me feel as though I did something wrong. I had foolishly hoped that things would return to how they were, when I did not know his identity and we spent time freely and openly. But when the tightness of his mouth did not dissipate, I felt him slipping more, creating a chasm between us. I did not understand. Was this his interpretation of a truce? My fingers began to curl and my hand wanted to move to touch his cheek. It was unsettling that he was acting this way. His stormy eyes grew colder and my heart sank lower. Yet I never stopped meeting his stare. I yearned to pull him back, tell him that this truce, these unchartered waters frightened me too.

But before I could do anything, Peeta straightened, breaking the enchantment.

"I need to leave. The boatman will be arriving soon, and the souls need to be judged," he said curtly. He stepped away from me quickly before I could respond, like a gust of wind that suddenly blew in the opposite direction. My eyes settled on the golden coins that fastened his dark cape to his dark tunic. They traced the leather-braided belt by his taut hips. I did not look at his face as he turned away. I watched him retreat to his Trivium, the ends of his cape floating with his gait. The sound of the falling rivers masked that of my pulse pounding in my head.

I was hurt by his reaction.

Disappointment was an emotion I often felt with Peeta, yet the tiny rip at my heart stung anew.

I needed to walk away from this place too. Only looking out at the vast underworld, where I could see everything from this vantage, where the wind moved the stalks in the Asphodel Meadows, and the mists covered the Elysian Fields, I did not know where to go.

I sighed. Perhaps it was time to explore.

* * *

I chose the closest door to the one I exited in Peeta's endless hallway. Beyond it was a bridge of rope suspended over a gray, steep gorge. The rocks of the mountain were jagged and porous, spiking upward like lances piercing the clouds.

I fleetingly wondered whether I should turn back, but this place drew me toward it. It was more ruthless in appearance than the other parts of the realm.

My foot took its first step on the bridge. It shook. The light wind swayed me to my right. My sweaty hands held the rope tightly.

A thought swooped into my mind that perhaps Peeta would be upset if he found me here. But then again, he had never expressly forbidden me any part of his realm. I took another step. And another, until the wind no longer made me hesitate. But as I looked down, I gripped the ropes until my knuckles were strained white against my hand. I needed a distraction. Standing at the halfway point of the bridge was not the best place to doubt myself. So I hummed a tune I had never heard before, knotting random melodies together in an attempt to keep my mind occupied.

I reached the end with a triumphant step onto the gray rocks. I stretched open my hand, letting the blood flow back. The way, disappearing to my right, was narrow, wrapping around the mountain like a treacherous embrace. I treaded this even more carefully. The path seemed endless, and I did not know if I proceeded upwards or downwards in the mountain.

I briefly wondered, looking downwards to the abyss once more, if Peeta would be able to rescue me should I have the unfortunate happenstance of falling. I knew he was occupied, and it could take some time for him to arrive, so I placed my next step with even more caution. My chest trembled with every breath.

I wanted to turn back, but the path was so narrow that there was hardly any room to even turn. No matter, I only had to move forward. There had to be another way out. Or it was possible that there was another door somewhere among the rocks that would lead me once again to Peeta's adamantine hall. I now wished that I'd taken the door next to this, the one that enthralled me with the lagoons.

Besides, Peeta did not seem in any mood to keep me company. Though I'd probably pushed him to that. I had not exactly been amiable towards him, remembering my small act of defiance by cutting him with the dagger.

I trudged more, the little pebbles denting my sandals and getting between my toes. All I could see now were thick clouds.

Then curiously, a melody reached me, a sensuous strum of an instrument that quivered through the air, providing an unlikely source of direction.

It was faint but it was enough to make me hope that there was an end to this path. My gait hastened as much as the path allowed, my hand never leaving the wall of sharp stone. When I turned the corner, I saw three gargantuan statues of men in their armor, with two flanking a massive opening in the mountain, and the other standing on the opening's roof.

The statue nearest to me held a trident, and had eyes that boasted of assertiveness. The statue on the other side wore a majestic helm, and held a circular shield carved with a triangular horn. He had waves in his hair and he seemed familiar. Peering at the angles of his jaw, I realized I was looking at Peeta's statue. The likeness made me smile, and I was awed by his commanding stature. The last statue bore an eagle on his shoulder and held a bolt of lightning in his right hand. I must be looking at the three gods, the three brothers who ruled all the realms of our world. The sky, the sea, and the underworld.

I walked towards the opening and immediately felt diminutive. I did not even reach Peeta's ankle.

The melody increased.

The air became humid once inside and a louder sound drowned out the melody momentarily. It was an even purr, an exhalation. And it came from a monstrous three-headed dog slumbering to my right.

I froze, my mouth agape. I was certain my galloping heart would wake them. I stood for uncounted moments, unable to move forward out of fear. Their breaths blew the wisps of my hair that had fallen out of my braid.

When they did not wake, and when I had convinced myself that they were sleeping soundly, I took a tentative step on the jagged stones. I was mentally berating myself, yet thrilled at the change of pace. It felt like the time when I almost fell from a tree but at the last moment had been able to grip a bough.

I must have made too much noise because the head nearest me opened its eyes, its intensely blue eyes that stilled my movements. Then its brothers woke, too. One had eyes so green, like the shallow waters of the sea. The third, in the middle, had steely gray eyes, much like mine.

Three pairs of very different, very penetrating eyes regarded me. The head that possessed the blue eyes pierced me—and I had seen that look before. It lowered its mountainous head closer and I could see its rows of sharpened teeth like knives. It moved its body and blocked the path from which I came. I took another step towards the melody pulling me. When I heard a growl rumbling from its chest, I ran, quick-footed as a hare. I wanted nothing more than to get away from this beast.

I saw another chamber within the mountain and wrenched open the massive doors. The melody grew louder and seemed to emanate from within.

Inside, I found myself in a cavernous, measureless hall, with nothing but arches of gray rock above me. It felt very cold.

I wished Peeta were here, despite his callousness.

Again, there was no way to move but forward, for I was sure that monstrous dog waited for me outside. The path was damp. Boulders littered the walls, as if a mighty thunder had caused them to fall.

When I reached what seemed the middle of the hall, I saw what was at the end. It was a very dark and perilous-looking gate of iron. Sharp cones bolted the bars together. I knew it was a prison, yet for whom, I was unsure.

The melody only became sweeter, pulling me onward, and I could not fight it. It spoke to the loneliness in my heart. And when I drew nearer, I saw those who were imprisoned.

They were massive beings who bore likeness to humans, yet brute, slow, and deliberate in their movements. Some reposed against the rocks, some sat on the ground, while others were standing, so tall it seemed they grew from the ceiling. Yet it was their eyes that were most frightening, many sets of sensuous, wicked eyes.

I saw where the melody came from. One of the beings played a beautiful instrument, a lyre, carved out of smooth, iridescent tortoiseshell, plucked with unexpected almost irreverent tenderness. I was mesmerized. Then the others crept out of the shadows. They all looked curiously at me.

The one nearest me pushed a wooden box towards the bars. The skin on his hand was as dry as crumbling limestone. The music bade me to accept the box, which passed through the partition as if it were air. The melody soared. The beings inside the prison stirred. But before I could open it, my arm was yanked away from the box and the music stopped, as though a taut thread had been cut.

I was faced with the very blue and very angry eyes of Peeta. But he was not looking at me. He was looking at the entities inside the cave.

Then a deep laugh rumbled from within, almost maniacal with rage and irony.

And I saw him, surrounded by the many livid eyes that glowed inside the prison. He was bigger, taller, and more frightening. And it was a surprise when Peeta addressed him.

"Father," Peeta curtly acknowledged.

The monster smiled. And he was beautiful and his aura entrancing.

"My son," his voice was raspy. "Such a delight that you could spare us a visit. Though I must say, your timing is most impeccable as always. Do try to be tardier next time, especially when we're being entertained by your splendid companion," he crooned.

My blood ran cold. I now knew who resided within the prison, saw it in the memories Peeta showed me before. The imprisoned beings were the Titans.

Then the man turned his eyes to me and smiled. "And who is this plaything of yours? Why not let her play with us while you attend to your godly responsibilities? We are so famished after thousands of years of your graciousness."

"She is none of your concern," Peeta replied icily. His grip on my arm tightened painfully.

I turned my attention to the Titan who spoke to Peeta, the Titan of time and the ages. He possessed a wide, thick beard that was as white as his hair. It glowed inside the prison like snow that gleamed with the sun's brilliant rays

"Ah yes, still so charming and ebullient and irascible, much like your old father."

Peeta still had not released my arm. He stepped forward in front of me, his arm stretched behind him to hold me back, as he addressed the Titans.

"Enough games. You are imprisoned here in accordance with the terms of your defeat and unless you wish to be punished more, I suggest never making another attempt to escape," he said, pushing the box I had accepted back into the prison. The iron bars swallowed the box and it stopped by the feet of Peeta's father.

His father looked at us again, at the hand that had locked like a claw around me. The titan laughed. "Foolish, foolish boy. Do you and your brothers still enjoy being children playing a man's game?" he probed.

Peeta sneered. "If we're foolish, then why is it that you're the one imprisoned and we are the ones with the power to rule?"

"If you think it shall remain that way, you are truly a fool for forgetting so quickly. I unseated my father before me just as you and your brothers usurped my seat. I think you are smart enough to know what to expect. The spark I started, the fires of fate, will never be contained," the Titan finished savagely.

"Enough of your lies!" Peeta hissed, and his blue flames burst at the prison bars, the lower portion swimming in flames.

The Titan of Time continued to look at Peeta with merciless eyes, with his face so near the bars it looked as though the flames were licking and distorting his face. "They are not lies, my son, until you have found the truth with which to refute them. There are truths to this world that you have to accept, and I am disappointed that you have not, after so much time. Oh, but what good are the lies of a forgotten deity imprisoned by his own sons?" he mocked, then turned to me.

"And she!" His glee reverberated cruelly among the stone walls. I felt Peeta stiffen beside me. The Titan shook his head while regarding Peeta. Then he began to laugh a cold, mirthless laugh.

Peeta straightened his back. His eyes were full of cold fury. The blue flames only crawled higher along the bars until they had reached past the height of the Titans and into soaring arches of rock above. The flames had severed everything, sight and sound. My eyes darted to the god beside me. I had never seen Peeta this enraged, and I knew some of his ire was directed at me, at my foolish actions. I dared not breathe.

He continued staring at the flames, breathing heavily. My sharp intake of breath caused him to look at me, as if he only just remembered that I was still with him. Those cold eyes pinned me; within them swirled the turmoil of the darkest storm, as he whispered savagely, "Have you lost your mind?"

I yanked my arm out of his grip and moved backwards. His steps matched mine, moving forward, so that I never really placed much distance between us. I felt his raw, angry energy rolling off him in waves. "Do you not remember Pandora and her foolishness and the memories I showed you? Do you know how close you came to freeing those monsters?"

"I did not know…"

"You weren't thinking!" he spat angrily.

"Well what am I supposed to think? There's nothing to do. You never forbade me to go anywhere. You never tell me anything!" I defended.

"Well, then, let's start, shall we?" His head dipped toward mine as the wall stopped my retreat. "Roaming the realm freely is not a privilege that has been extended to you, because you are not a guest here," he said, his last words punctuated viciously.

"Then what am I?" I exploded in return, my hands gripping my hair, my frustrations spilling, challenging him in return. "What am I to you? Am I a prisoner? Should I just confine myself in a room, locked away until I return home?" My finger slithered up his neck in mockery. "Or should I play the role of your little plaything, as you so cruelly did not deny moments ago?"

Peeta took a step back, as if my touch burned him. I felt that wall come up again instantly, his anger deflating, the indifference returning. I would have preferred his earlier outburst to this distance.

We stared at each other, rife with so many unsaid sentiments. But I would not be the one to reach out first this time.

"Come. I've been away from my duties for too long," he said in a calm manner that unsettled me. He took me by my elbow again and I did not resist, wanting nothing more than to leave this place.

* * *

He let go of my arm as soon as we entered the Trivium. But we were not alone. I had never seen it so full of people, of souls. They stood in rows upon endless rows, and I could see all of them from my vantage high above, not far from Peeta's throne.

Peeta strode purposefully back to his seat, ignoring me. I walked closer to have a better view. Down the steps, directly below Peeta, sat his councilmen. I saw the flames where the souls stepped forward to have their actions recounted. The boatman stood by the door to the far back, his chin resting upon his upright oar. The frightening and formidable Erinyes stood ground in front of a door to the left, no doubt leading to the place where the wicked were sent, perhaps another portion of Tartarus. The dandelion rain from the Asphodel Meadows blew through one door to my right while the mists of the Elysian Fields floated in from another.

He'd stopped everything, for me, to rescue me from the Titans.

I felt inferior and ashamed for my earlier actions. The souls looked at me curiously as I sat on the topmost step, an arm's length away from Peeta's throne.

I looked at Peeta, sitting still and upright. His hard, disinterested eyes settled on nothing as he gazed on everyone. His profile was majestic, his angled jaw sharp against the background of the flames against the wall. The hem of his cape peeked out from the edge of his glassy adamantine throne. And at that moment, I saw none of the livid Peeta earlier, nor the Peeta who laughed with me in the Elysian Fields as the crown of flowers I weaved for him dropped to the ground. Here, he was the God of the Dead, fulfilling his purpose. An impartial judge who reigned over the souls of the departed. Omniscient. Powerful. Fearsome to behold.

I watched as each of the soul's lives were played in the flames. There were so many souls, weary men and young children alike, women who had passed from the earth giving life to their children, old men with stooped backs. Scores of them, standing, awaiting their next fate. I watched most of them, before I started feeling fatigued.

A hand rested on my right shoulder just as I had yawned discreetly. I had only realized that I had not slept yet, not since coming back from the mortal realm. I turned and saw one of the masked servants handling me a goblet of Ambrosia. I drank it tiredly. Suddenly my body was heavy with exhaustion and I yearned for sleep.

When I finished the goblet, the servant whispered to me that it was time for my rest. I was thankful, for I did not think I could keep my eyes open any longer. She led me away from the Trivium and I dared one last glance at Peeta. He never looked at me during the judging, but I thought perhaps he would at least give a nod my way just to acknowledge my departure.

He gave me none and I turned away, ignoring the pinch in my chest, letting the servant lead me back to the hall of endless doors.

When I had been cleaned and dressed, she led me to a familiar room, with silver stairs and grass-covered walls. I knew this room. I had been led here the very first time I was deceived by Peeta. This was his chamber.

I had my reservations, my memories alerting my mind to what had happened here, but I was too tired to protest. Besides, we had agreed to a truce. The past was to be forgotten. So I sank my body into the soft bed and fell asleep immediately.

And I dreamt. It was a rainy night in my dream. I ran in the cold wet streets barefoot. The water trickled from the bended rooftops and into my hair. I knew I was supposed to go to the house with three windows beside its green door. I knew this house to be at the next street to my right. I ran and ran, surprisingly agile despite the slippery street. Something important to me was inside that house and I had to find her. When I reached the green door, I pounded my closed fist onto the rough wood, scratching the side of my palm as I continued. When it opened, I saw my sister Prim, but she was younger, much younger. The same age she had been when I offered my life for hers as sacrifice. She was screaming in tears at me but the rain was too loud and I could not hear her. I tried to enter the house but I couldn't. And Prim only cried more desperately. Then the livid eyes of the cruel Titan, Peeta's father, appeared beside my crying sister. I shouted at him to stay away but he only laughed. He slammed the door close as an arm wrapped around my waist and I saw the old seer dragging me away into a cage. We were suddenly on a trek upwards. The disfigured faces of the priests who perished on the day of my sacrificed flanked my cage, chanting. Then the fumes of the volcano surrounded us and before my cage could be dropped into its infernal depths, I awoke with a jolt.

My dream was too vivid, too real, too close to my fears for me to forget and go back to sleep. The noises still played in my head as I lay on my side. I clutched at the thin cotton blanket that covered me, let myself feel it against my skin and to confirm that I had returned from the land of dreams and that somewhere far away, my sister was safe. I tried to calm myself, but my breaths still came in short intervals.

Then something rustled behind me. Someone breathed against shoulder.

I turned my head and I was greeted by Peeta's sleeping face.

The shock made me swallow, my dry throat hurting. My instinct was to push myself away, but his peaceful face halted me. I had never seen him like this. I did not even know that gods slept. He lay on his side too, facing me. His arm was propped beneath his head, as though he had been watching me first before he slumbered. I felt my cheeks blossom in heat as I saw his torso bereft of his tunic, the planes of his chest exposed to me as if sculpted from marble. The cotton blanket hid everything below his waist and I berated my mind, imploring it not to wander.

I looked back at his face. And I was confused as to why he was with me. But a part of me was also grateful that I was not alone, with the tremors of my nightmare still coursing beneath my skin.

Thoughts of my dream once again turned my blood to ice. How Prim screamed. How I tried to get to her. It seemed everything in my life was about me being separated. I wanted to go back to sleep but I could not calm myself.

So I turned to my side and faced Peeta.

He was still sleeping deeply. Perhaps he was also tired from judging countless souls. At once, my hand reached out to brush an errant wave of hair that had fallen to his forehead. The strands slipped between my fingers, soft as the underside of a young leaf. I tucked it gently back to its brothers. I wanted to touch his cheek too, but I was I afraid it would wake him, and I still wanted to luxuriate in this moment, when I could be close to him without being guarded. I looked at his slightly parted lips and remembered them on me, even though it was to deliver the pomegranate seed in trickery. But the phantom feeling surfaced on my lips, and in remembrance, my finger just touched the pillow of his bottom lip.

I found myself moving nearer, our elbows and forearms almost touching. I was close enough to feel his breaths flutter against my collarbone like a butterfly's wings. Slowly, I tried to match his breathing to calm myself, to banish the lingering howls of my nightmare. I breathed in when he did, watching his chest rise. I exhaled as he did, watching his eyelids flutter in dreams. This moment felt both forbidden and fragile, and slowly, my body relaxed again, awash in the undercurrent of this peacefulness. I closed my eyes and let sleep claim me, and I was sure I moved even closer to Peeta, and I felt the weight of an arm by my waist, encircling me.

* * *

I awoke in warmth, and in the moment between dreams and waking, I remembered that Peeta slept beside me. I found that I did not mind as much as I thought I should.

"Are you awake?" he asked me quietly. I opened my eyes then. I was on my side still, facing him, but Peeta lay on his back with his arms pillowed behind his head. I was close enough to see the rippling lines of muscle on his stomach. The intimacy of the moment was not lost on me, and I also could not say, despite my earlier confusion, that I regretted his presence.

I sat up, letting the thin cotton blanket cover my chest even though my dress was still on me. It felt too gauzy a cover for when a man was bare beside me. Peeta remained lying down.

Then he began to speak quietly, a confession whispered in the peaceful moments after waking. "I had been so tired after the judging of the souls. I always am, and I find myself in need of repose. My brothers do not see as I do, nor do the other gods. They do not see every moment of the lives of mortals, do not relive it with them, do not wonder how they felt, do not see every memory recounted. They do not know the humans as much as I do. And every time it's over, I feel aged, and I'm often alone, letting everything sink into me and be a part of myself. And when I saw you, in my bed, sleeping so peacefully, I could not resist."

I bit my lip at his pronouncement, remembering my earlier actions while he had slept. I welcomed this rare moment, when Peeta confided his undisclosed thoughts, from a side of his that had yet to step into the light.

"Well if you need to rest more, then I should go," I said, looking at his exhausted face, as I began to push myself out of the bed. I needed to get away and clear my head before I did something foolish. But it seemed Peeta did not want me to go. His arm tugged at the cotton blanket, the fabric stretching between us and restraining me. He turned and his left arm settled on my right side. His torso hovered over my upright one, his head angled as his eyes bore into mine. There was a teasing glint to them, and I knew the Peeta who had quietly confessed moments before was gone. There were so many sides to this god. Peeta swung his other leg so mine were between his. Then he rose up and up with his arms supporting him, the nearness between our bodies a delicious temptation, until the blanket fell away from him and he was now bare in front of me. My eyes flitted like a thief to the muscles that rippled at the base of his spine, then to the ones that emerged from his arms, and I felt him observing me. Blood flowed to my cheeks as I felt his breath there. It was a sorely difficult task to bring my eyes back to his face and lock them by the bridge of his aquiline nose. The delicateness of the moment intoxicated me. My heart slowed in its rhythm and my breathing became shallow. My pulse pounded hard between my ears.

His cheek brushed against mine as his mouth hovered near my ear. "I just remembered," he said in a voice alluringly low, "that we have yet to settle the terms of our truce."

I felt vertiginous in response to his actions, but I replied as best as I could.

"I may need more time to think about it."

He withdrew. "Let's start simply then." He leaned in again and kissed me gently on my cheek. Then he whispered, "Will you allow me to do that?"

I nodded.

"Good," he smiled at me and moved away, sitting on the edge of the bed.

When I had recovered my senses, I looked at Peeta again, his back to me.

And I saw them, littered across his back. Scars. Some were raised welts, some were merely shadows of dark skin, the remnants of deep gashes he suffered. I gasped.

"They're from the Divine War," Peeta murmured, knowing exactly the reason for the sound. "The Titans fought mightily, and the war lasted for a long time. They unleashed monstrous creatures too, before we defeated all of them and drove the Titans to the pit of Tartarus."

My hand moved forward and my fingers traced the patches of skin.

"And I have a request, Katniss." My hand stopped and my palm rested near his shoulder. "Please do not go anywhere near Tartarus again," he whispered fervently, his head turning to look at me. I nodded slowly, still hypnotized by our shared moment.

Peeta stood up and walked to a chair where his dark tunic rested. He was naked, and I turned my head to look away. But his teasing voice reached me. "You can look," he told me. I resisted.

He chuckled. "I had forgotten how pure you are," he said as I heard the rustle of the tunic against his skin. I looked down at my fingers that gripped the cotton blanket tight.

This was a most odd moment. Peeta flitted between serious and mischievous and I did not know what to make of it. And how I reacted, so imprudently. I ought to be berating myself, but if I were honest, I would not know how to react well. I had never been in this position before.

Then Peeta left, going down the silver steps of the stairs, the sound of his footsteps growing fainter and fainter, my heart mirroring the rhythm.

* * *

I never saw much of Peeta after our shared moment in bed. He was always occupied, it seemed. Or away at Olympus. In our times together before, he was always the one to come to me. He would find me, or send for his servants to fetch me. But I now roamed his realm alone, trying different doors and seeing where they led. Apart from the places I had been to, I discovered dry stretches of endless sand, snowy mountains, as well places that spoke to my emotion. There was a door that led to a bright place where I felt the purest elation while another door opened up so much doubt in me, the fog dragging my mind away from all logic. If the door's contents felt treacherous, I would stay away, keeping my promise to Peeta.

But I was always alone. I always drank my Ambrosia alone and I slept in his bed alone. Sometimes I would dream of him coming to bed, to sleep beside me, but it would be empty when I woke up.

And now, I had drunk the last of the Ambrosia and knew I would go back to the mortal realm soon.

I sat in the soft grass beneath a dark sky. This was one of my favorite places in Peeta's realm, five doors away from his Trivium. There were no flowers growing in the grass and a bare forest surrounded the plain. A ruined wall with columns where vines snaked their way up, covered with the softest moss, stood to my right. I walked over to it and sat on its steps, leaning against one of the columns. There was peace here in the darkness. Perhaps I had seen so many ecstasies and miseries pass in the days, lost my way countless times, that I felt to be kindred spirits with the night.

And then I saw them, my favorite things to observe here. The stars fell from the sky in a bright blaze, shooting to where the ground met the sky.

Then I heard his gait behind me, both the source and the balm to my ache.

"I've been told you're here often. It's interesting that you should choose this," he said. "Do you know what this place is, Katniss?"

I wanted to shout at him that I didn't know much anymore, because he was never here, but I shook my head instead, deflated.

"This is the place where mortal dreams go," he said, sitting beside me. His fresh, clean scent purred beneath my nose. I had missed his presence.

"Every time a star falls and bursts in the sky, a mortal has fulfilled his dream," he explained, staring at the sky with me. We did not speak anymore, but observed as a handful more of stars streaked past against the night.

"You're leaving soon," he stated, looking back down.

I wanted to ignore him, to see if it affected him as much as his absences had stung me. As much as our companionship had been turbulent, it hurt to be ignored. I let the silence fall between us.

When he did not say anything, I swallowed my petty game and confronted him. "I thought we were past this Peeta," I confessed in my bruised voice. I stood up, walking a few steps away.

I faced him. His face betrayed no emotion.

"What do you mean?" he asked, standing too and walking towards me. I stared at his chest, covered by his dark tunic. I knew he knew what I meant. My disappointment hung heavily. But what exactly did I want from him anyway? Did I want him closer to me? Did I want to be friends? But I found that I also could not say it, and if I had not the courage, how was I to ask for it?

"Forget it," I whispered, leaving.

He grabbed my arm. "No, stay here." He lifted my chin to look at him. I let seconds pass before I met his eyes. And I found myself wanting him to look at me differently, even angry, anything but his passive stare. At least I knew his angry side well. But it was not just Peeta that was bothering me. My impending return to the other realm brought anxieties about my family. I wished so much that nothing had changed since my last visit.

I wanted so many things I did not know which one to chase after first.

And my emotions had perhaps flitted across my face because Peeta cupped my cheek and asked me, "Are you afraid of going back?"

I answered him truthfully, tired of playing games and seeing if he would take my futile baits. "No. I'm afraid of what I'll find changed."

"Don't be," he whispered fiercely. "It suits you ill to be afraid." His eyes were as ablaze as the stars but his hand remained tender against my face.

"And when I return here, what will I find?" I asked, my question laced with all the confusion and pain I had endured since coming back here.

"Me," he answered bluntly, and I lowered my eyes. "And everything as it had always been. You can at least find comfort in that remaining unchanged." And he walked away.

And right at that moment a painful thought crept through my mind. Perhaps he resented my presence. It was a possibility I had to accept, that perhaps he never really wanted anything to do with me, that I had splintered something in the grand plans of gods when I volunteered for my sister and I was thrust unwontedly into his domain and he had no choice. It seemed there would never be anything right in my existence as I drifted between the realms. I had foolishly thought, dreamed even for a fleeting moment when I had proposed the truce, that there would be something stable in Peeta I could return to in the underworld, no matter how changed my life in the mortal realm would be. But it seemed it would never come true, a dream stolen from me again, as everything had been for me.

* * *

Upon return to the mortal realm, I asked the messenger of the gods if I could alight at a secluded portion of the expansive shore beneath our home.

I wanted a moment alone to myself before I faced my family. And I realized I had never had a moment to myself where I did not think of my sacrifice or its consequences or when I was not swimming in my loneliness. I hadn't yet had a moment to just be.

It was past midday and the shore was still peaceful, the farmers and the merchants still at the agora. I inhaled the crisp air of early winter. I knew the olives had been harvested and the trees had shed their golden hued leaves. Bending forward, I unlaced my sandals and let my toes sink into the damp sand.

I inhaled deeply again, expelling the stale air of the underworld from my chest. I waded into the foamy waters, the coldness spiking up my spine, but I welcomed the sensation. A flock of birds fled above, racing towards the sun. The song of the sea crested and fell, soothing me. I had missed being connected to my senses.

I stayed this way for a long time, standing, thinking of nothing, and only looking out into the sea. I was at last at peace, centered once more, and I felt my fortitude building again. And then I decided it was time to go to my family, and I walked away from the sea before its soft, foamy arms beckoned me again. The thought of seeing my family brought a sense of joy to me, yet at the same time, Peeta's aloofness still hovered over my heart. As I walked up the steps of the cliff leading to my home, as everything that happened to me buried itself in my mind, I realized what a peculiar sensation it was to have both happiness and sadness exist side by side in my heart.

* * *

I saw my father carrying his vases as he fumbled with the door. I hastened my steps to help him and took the vases from him slowly, my smile already in my lips at seeing him.

"Katniss!" my father exclaimed in surprise, gathering me in his arms. And as I returned his embrace, the emotions tided over too strongly as I counted how long a time I still had to be with them. Each time I rose from the underworld, my family ran closer and closer to death, far from where I could reach them. I felt a thousand needles on my nose at the thought that there was not enough time left. I could not even see the beauty of the rare sunset that covered us now, a pale gold instead of a fiery fire. My father's arms had not the strength they had before, and his hair was speckled with more white strands.

Father and I stepped into our home. It was empty, yet the sight of our familiar tables and curtains and shelves soothed me. I walked to the kitchen to prepare my father's afternoon drink, my limbs moving in memory. He took the glass from me and sipped slowly, savoring the drink. "You were always the only one who could make this right," he complimented. "Even your mother still can't prepare it correctly," he said.

I could only smile. "Where are they?" I asked.

"They should be back soon. Your sister needed to visit the temple. And she has something to tell you," my father said.

I occupied myself by fixing the vases on the table until I heard voices coming from beyond the door. There was laughter, and it brought a pang to my heart, a selfish one, to think that they could be happy without me. But I chastised myself, for what else were they to do? Their mourning had to pass.

My mother and sister stood by the open door, the soft light framing their motionless stances at seeing me. Mother had not changed so much. Prim had. She was already older than me. My little sister. She was a woman now, lovelier than the first blooms of spring, a perfect blend of honey and milk.

Then I noticed a companion of theirs, a man. I saw Prim talk to him as my mother stepped forward eagerly, and with a cry, gathered me in a fierce embrace.

"I dreamt of you, Katniss," she said. "That you would come back soon, and here you are," my mother said, tears shining in her eyes. She held me the longest and I sighed in content at the familiar smell of her. My mother's joy could not be contained as she set out to cook a hearty meal to celebrate my return.

Then lastly, my sister greeted me. Her hair was so long now, reaching past her waist like a golden veil.

"I have something to tell you, sister," Prim said, eyes full of excitement as she pulled back.

"I am to be married."

* * *

They told me the story of the betrothal over our supper. Father had arranged the union with a respectable family in the city who had been trading with him for a long time. Prim's betrothed was an agreeable man. She described me her future home, nearer to the city than our home now. I saw the delight dancing in her eyes. And at that moment, I envied my sister and all the possibilities I had opened for her, everything I would unfairly never have. I kept my bright smile to hide this.

My sister and I resumed our shared chores after supper, and as everyone slept, I went outside and into the meadow where I first met my immortal father.

I had thought seeing my family would be easier now. I thought I had been strong enough for any changes, but it seemed unhappiness would be my shadow henceforth.

Once more, Peeta entered my mind unbidden. And the tears slid out of my eyes, a sob squeezed from my chest.

I felt the arms of my immortal father consoling me.

"Tell me what's wrong, my child," he said after a while, as my heart grew heavier. "Your pain is an ache to my heart too," he said as he rocked me comfortingly and I could not help but cry more. It was better here, in the dark woods, with only the trees and the night to witness the anguish I could not share with my family.

When I was coherent enough to word my thoughts, I confessed everything to my father. His eyes were doleful as they regarded me, his hand wiping my angry tears.

"I feel as though I have no place anywhere, father. As though I exist without any purpose anymore. And I mourn for what I shall never experience, with my family leaving me behind. It becomes more and more real each time I return to them. There is only emptiness waiting for me in my future. Even my home no longer feels like a home."

My father held me tighter, resting his cheek against the top of my head as more of my anguish shook me.

"But my child," he said, after I had quieted down. He looked at me, his silver eyes sharp as ever as his hands held my face, "Everyone will leave you. It is the way the world has been ordained. It may be different with you, but the loss you will feel when they're truly gone will be no less painful than if you never took your sister's place. There is no one who is spared this pain."

Fresh tears coursed down my cheeks and I wished I would run out of them if it made me impervious to misery. But my father held me until I had shed the last tears that contained my emptiness, my acceptance, my surrender, and I watched the last drop fall to the ground.

Fate's strong current always prevailed, and I was but a piece of wood adrift in the sea.

* * *

The assembly of the gods was a hastily called one, called solely out of his brother's, the god of the sky's, concern over the recent matter of the Titans.

As Peeta stood up from his seat to the left of the supreme deity, he looked over to see his brother's wife, who was chatting with the goddess of wisdom, fount of strategy. He needed something from the goddess of marriage, lady of the sky.

It was madness, his mind insisted, what he was planning to do. But it was too late.

He had seen Katniss crying again, had heard her softly confess her sorrow to the god of the harvest, her father. He watched as the tears did not stop, and he knew why she shed them.

Peeta knew he was to be blamed as well. He had been distant with her while in the underworld. He had avoided her presence, especially after she had proposed the truce. It alarmed him how easily he had accorded to her wishes. He feared it to be a weakness. So he ignored his instincts when he felt her calling to him. He had left her to herself unless urgent.

But he could never truly stay away from her.

And now, he followed the goddess of marriage, lady of the sky to her dwelling as the other gods dispersed and went back to their duties.

When he had told her what he needed, she scoffed. "Is it for your little pet?"

Peeta ignored her insult.

"She ought to be punished, your little pet, for what she could have done," the goddess scorned.

"Why should she be when it never transpired? It would be as if we were punishing her for thinking badly, which we know you do all the time," Peeta countered. "Do you have what I need or do you not?" he asked, untroubled.

The goddess, after leveling him with a glare, gave him a small copper box.

He opened it. "Perfect," he said. Then he turned to leave.

"So there is some truth to the rumors that have been floating about," the goddess whispered.

Peeta stopped, though not truly caring for what she had to say for he had gotten what he needed.

"You fool," she said suddenly, when he neither denied nor acknowledged her statement. "Do you not know she can be your undoing?" She breathed.

He paid his brother's wife no mind as he went out the door, walking towards the chariot with his deathless horses, going back to his realm alone with only his duties to distract him.

* * *

After I had poured out my discontentment to my immortal father that night, it was easier to spend time with my family again. We passed the weeks preparing for my sister's wedding. I would not be here when it happened, so I helped as much as I could to make up for my absence, for my guilt that burned within me whenever I remembered my envy. I would not see my sister riding the chariot driven by her husband as they went to the abode that her husband would build for her, with my sister wearing a veil of red as protection from spirits who wished the bridal pair harm, and carrying ivy to symbolize their endless love. I would not be present in the feast nor witness the ceremonial bath. These were only the beginning of the many things I would always be missing.

In this late afternoon, my mother sewed Prim's veil while I made the nightgowns. We had already sewn the curtains as well as the bed covers and blankets. My mother then punctured our silence with a question.

"Have you met him?"

I raised my head from where it was bent near the cloth and put my needle down. "Who?"

"Your immortal father," she clarified.

I nodded. "Do you still remember him?" I asked, remembering what the god of the harvest had told me before. It felt odd to talk about my immortal father, when the one who had raised me was reposing in the other room.

My mother smiled at the memories she must have been recalling. "I had never forgotten him, though what I had felt had already changed," she said.

"Why did you love him?" I asked, very curious as to her reply.

"For many reasons, which I cannot recall anymore. But I felt as though I would never be left wanting, for I knew how fervently he felt for me."

Then she looked at me. "Katniss, I do not regret loving both your fathers, but it was better this way."

I did not reply, but merely nodded again.

"You've been too quiet again lately. It's your sister, isn't it?" my mother asked kindly. I immediately felt guilty once more.

"Of course not," I said. It was better to cloak the truth. "I wish so fiercely there was something I could do so you always remember me even when I am away or have your love toward me remain unchanged."

My mother put aside my sister's veil and placed her hands atop my cold ones. "Katniss we will never not love you," she said, smiling sadly at me, her eyes pleading for me to understand. "I can never tell the rain to not come, nor the sun to never shine, nor can I tell the fates to reverse their intentions for you. But what is important is that you are not lost to us anymore, even if the time we spend with you is as fleeting as the best of dreams we hold onto before waking, I would take it over losing you completely.

"You must have been so afraid," she said, tucking my hair back, a gesture I would never tire of receiving.

"I still am," I confessed. "Everyday, every moment, of what I would find when I next return. It's what hangs on my mind when I leave and it's the first thought that surfaces before I return. I dread it, mother, not just fear it. I had learned there to be a difference. You fear the unknown, but you dread that which you cannot escape."

My mother smiled sadly at me. In the harsh winter sun, I saw her mouth had gotten thinner, her skin no longer as luminous. But my aging mother was still beautiful to me.

"Don't," she says. "It keeps you from living. And we are in this world to live. Whatever may happen to you, you choose how you feel, how you conduct yourself, and how you deal with your fate."

Her answer reminded me of what my grandmother had instilled in me long ago. Perhaps I needed to hear it once more so it did not drown against my other thoughts. My mother looked so sure of her response to me that I did not have the courage to tell her it would be difficult to live, to return here, once they were all gone.

* * *

The season passed too soon and the dreary winter was cast aside by an early, breezy spring. I could only claim small victories of happiness with my family this time. I was to return any day now, and I waited for the signal from the god of the harvest. I spent more and more time with him too, and even asked him about the Titans and the Divine War as we walked along the thin forest atop a mountain. He answered how Peeta and his two brothers were critical to the gods's victory. I relayed to him how I had gotten lost in Tartarus and his words shed light on Peeta's terrifying reaction then. The gods had built a special key that would open the prison of the Titans. As punishment, this key rested in a chest inside their prison. Only an immortal could pass it through the bars and pull it out, but only a mortal could open the chest. I was the rare mix of both, and the opportunity had been too sweet for the Titans. When I realized how close I had been to unleashing their horrors, I shuddered. Perhaps Peeta's reaction had not been unjustified.

I waited in my father's pottery shop again today. He had been falling ill so I told him I would take care of his shop. Every ailment my parents felt had sent my heart jolting in fear. I feared too many things nowadays.

I was about to close the shop when a young man approached the door. He had an easy smile I trusted and kind eyes, and perhaps I had seen him passing by before. He was tall and broad and had reddish hair and a beard. He was perhaps a handful of years ahead of me.

He introduced himself as Darius and he said he would like to purchase a water vase for his mother's home. He looked over at some of the vases still displayed. I had painted most of them. Father proudly told me I was improving. They were the outlet of my emotions and I had only let the brush move as an extension of my heart.

I was so distracted arranging the vases that he had to repeat what he said.

"Would it be possible for you to choose for me instead?" he asked. "I'm afraid I would make a poor choice for my mother," he sheepishly admitted. I teased him that my father never made inferior vases. I smiled most disarmingly just to see him fumble more. The poor man blushed and muttered that he never meant any offense.

I sighed and stopped my little game, selecting a vase suitable to his needs. He dropped the silver drachmas twice before he could hand them over as payment.

"I should go," he said.

"Goodbye then, and thank you for your purchase," I said. I thought nothing of the exchange but the small amusement I had gotten from it.

I was about to close the door when Darius appeared again, breathless, as though he had run up and down the cliffs.

"I've been intending to buy that vase for a week now but I've never had enough courage to approach you," he said.

I could only stare at him and try to make sense of what he said.

"I was hoping to meet your father here so I could ask permission to see you more," he said, blushing again, the late afternoon sun blazing against his cheek.

Perhaps if I were normal, and if my choices had not led me to this path in life, I would have known where this could lead.

And I was so tempted to say yes, walk him to my father, to see where it would lead. It was liberating to feel even just a shadow of a choice, of normalcy. I craved a semblance of a linear life, one that followed a path similar to other mortals.

Darius was handsome too, though he did not have any of Peeta's airs, but nobody ever would in this realm anyway.

I looked at Darius's eager, hopeful face. It must have taken a lot of courage for him to admit those words. So I let him down as gently as I could with a lie. "I'm afraid someone has already asked for my father's permission ahead of you," I said.

Darius blinked. "Oh," he said, scratching his head. "Then thank you for being gracious about it. I hope you'll be happy with him." And he turned and walked away, picking up the vase he purchased gingerly, never looking back.

I watched him go with faint disappointment, hoping that Peeta had not seen this exchange.

* * *

But it was futile to hope for even a moment when Peeta did not watch me, for the first stern question sliding off his tongue as I approached his throne, accepting the goblet of Ambrosia was, "Who was that man?"

I sighed and sipped the Ambrosia, taking my time. "Who?" I asked, pretending to be ignorant.

"The man who visited you in your father's shop," Peeta replied bluntly. "Who was he?"

"Why do you ask?" I said, leveling him with a cool stare.

"So I know if I should turn him into a goat for your sister's wedding feast," he said darkly.

"Don't you dare," I hissed. Peeta's moody treatment of me was exhausting. "He's no one," I admitted, perhaps more sadly than I intended.

I looked at Peeta, daring him to challenge me. But instead of any petty emotion, I saw understanding in his eyes. Then they turned gentle when he asked me next, "Would you like to send a gift to your sister?"

I had not expected that, but I clung to such a hope that he would stop being moody with me that I replied only too eagerly, "That would be wonderful."

He took my hand and led me to one of the doors I'd never been through. The rush of a river greeted us, and I followed him up some steps carved out of stone. It led to a mouth of a cave, narrow yet thrice the height of a man. The passageway was dark but the center of the cave was illuminated by light coming from its ceiling. It shined down on a giant, golden horn, its tail curved upwards. It was spilling with gold and silver and jewels.

"This is my cornucopia," Peeta explained. "Take whatever you wish to give to your sister."

And I looked around at the exquisite stones sparkling around me. I picked up rings and anklets and bracelets. I settled for a necklace of gold and creamy ivory delicately braided, reminding me of the colors I associated with Prim. Peeta handed me some papyrus and a quill to write my thoughts down for my sister. When I was done, he produced his blue flames and saw my sister in them, preparing the morning meal with my mother. I felt a pang of longing that I did not think would ever go away. The fire consumed the necklace and the papyrus and it appeared before her. She was startled at first, but perhaps remembered my promise to her that I would remember her while I was gone. I watched my sister read my note, saw her eyes twinkle with tears. It was then that I had also finally let go of my bitterness. Remembering my mother's words, I resolved to enjoy this moment, seeing my sister so happy. It was what I fought for when I took her place in the sacrifice.

She read my note twice, and I memorized her smile each time.

Then Peeta quietly appeared by my side. "And would you consent if I give another gift to you too?" he asked, and there was something in his eyes I could not read. It promised something great, prompting uneasiness in me. I looked around, perhaps his gift was in the cornucopia, but he assured me it was not here.

And he led me away from the cave and back to the hallway of doors, back to the Elysian Fields. We climbed the hill topped with the tree with weeping branches, where we spent much time before. There was a new door by the gray trunk.

But before we entered, I stopped Peeta by his tunic. "What is this Peeta?" I asked, and I could see barely-contained happiness in his eyes.

He moved nearer and gently took my face in his hands. I dared not move, nor breathe.

"I know I've been distant with you, and I apologize. But it'll be different from now on," he promised, leading my hand through the door.

And through the door was paradise, a land of lush flowers and trees and sparkling light.

My surroundings amazed me. Everywhere around me bloomed life. We stood on a path flanked with bowing and swaying flowers, with stems of varied heights. There were delicately curling foliage with soft petals drenched in colors I had never imagined, marriages of colors I had never known. The reds were touched with cool violets, the soothing blues surrounded by the softest yellows and streaked with feathery greens. And I felt warmth from a light in the sky. It was the sun, the one whose absence I had mourned in the underworld. It was here now, but it was so much more. The ever-changing light transformed the atmosphere and beauty of my surroundings.

I looked at Peeta who was beside me, enjoying my reaction.

"Go on," he urged me.

I explored the meandering path towards the frothy-blossomed trees. The light spread over everything, and beyond the trees I saw a sunken enclosure. I walked down the steps to a small garden surrounded by stone arches. And inside those arches were a bed and chairs and tables, with a breezy curtain enclosing them. Everything was charming and quiet, a splendid refuge.

I walked up the steps on the opposite side, Peeta following me close by, his smile never leaving his lips.

Past the trees was a lake with an immaculate surface, but beneath the waters was a splendor of more color, as though billowing clouds of ink, sighing indigos and dancing teals, spilled into endless pools. The lake had two wooden bridges with an island in the center. Trees with drooping branches lined the bridge as the sunlight played with its leaves. Golden apples dropped from its vein-like boughs. More trees embraced the lake, more flowers whose intense hues gleamed in the sun crowned it instead of a shore, and in the distance hills rolled into the horizon. The air smelled of mint and sweet perfume.

I was unable to say anything as I felt Peeta's presence behind me. My words were insufficient to reflect the emotions exploding in me. I shivered from the passing breeze and felt Peeta wrap his cloak around my shoulders, then he whispered close to my ear as I stared at the marble pillars of the island. "I built everything here for you."

I turned and faced him, placing my hand on his cheek. He took this and pressed a kiss on my palm. "This is your home now," he vowed solemnly.

I thought of everything he had done, the polarity, the duality, the goodness that wrapped around the darkness I had accepted about him, and it was as though everything had fallen into place, as natural as stone falling to the earth, and I saw my own possibilities in this realm, with him. Even as everything moved away from me, I had Peeta.

* * *

He did not want to let go of her hand resting by his cheek. Peeta pulled her closer with his other arm, closing his eyes as their foreheads touched. He knew why he had built this place for her, why he asked the god of the sun for the orb in the sky and the goddess of marriage, lady of the sky for her golden apples, or for the god of the harvest's help with the flowers and trees, painting everything into a once-empty realm. The answer burned deep inside him, but remained one he would not admit. Not yet. Not even to himself. It was too new, too unknown, too frightening how well wrapped around his heart she already was.

He'd been distant with her as he fought his emotions. It was a curse, and his Titan father had planted that doubt. But it was freedom too. There were so many things tethered to this fragile woman who with one look could scatter his thoughts everywhere.

Then a soft drizzle enveloped them.

"It rains here too?" Katniss asked as she pulled away to look at the sky.

"Yes, because what is above in the mortal realm can be found here. And because you have eyes like the rain," he said.

Katniss smiled brilliantly, looking as though she might cry, and he moved closer. His fingers traced her cheek and stopped by the corner of her lips. Lowering his head, he looked her straight in the eye, so that she may never doubt his intentions from here on.

"May I?" he whispered.

She stilled as Peeta gently held her face. He tilted his head, closed his eyes, and slowly pressed his lips gently against hers as the rain fell like a caress around them. He kissed the bow on top as her lips parted. Then the one below, slowly. He swept his lips over her jaw, trailing a pilgrimage up her cheek, her sigh emboldening him, then kissed both her closed eyes, and back to her lips again. This time she responded by pressing deeper, yet still with the traces of endearing hesitance. One of his hands rested by her nape while the other pulled her closer, settling by the dip of her waist. Then with the softest of kisses, of touches, he taught her to want him. She granted him entrance and their tongues danced. And he felt a monumental desire awakening in him, burning like a thousand tiny torches only she could ignite. Their kiss was shining with intimacy, with fascination, and relentless yearning. Everything about Katniss was thrilling. The sweet puff of breath she exhaled. Her lips that delicately followed his. Her hand that rested above his heart.

Peeta released her lips then moved to the supple skin of her throat, her head tilting to the side, her eyes still closed. Her scent filled all the vacuous spaces in his being. His hands brushed over her back and trailed down her spine as he continued to softly taste the underside of her jaw. Her grip on his shoulder conveyed her awakening desires. Then with a last brush of his lips against her collarbone that earned him a honeyed sigh, Peeta kissed her lips once more, already parted and seeking his hungrily. The fevered rush she ignited in him, against the cool rain, was maddening.

When they parted, she smiled again at him, and for once in his eternal existence, he felt what humans must have felt at their most rapturous moment.

He held her close, but the rush was too much and, taking himself by surprise, he picked her up and twirled her around, her head snapping back in elation as she tasted the light rain.

"Thank you," she murmured, and kissed him again, this time more emboldened.

And he thought,  _I brought you here, to me…_

He pulled back gently and then set her down. "Now go, I know you want to see more of your paradise," he teased.

He had never seen her smile that way before, her eyes iridescent with joy.

_I need you here, with me…_

And she moved with ease too, a shy giggle escaping her lips as she stepped backwards, holding his hand until their fingers had to part. His arm floated down to his side as he watched her run across the flowering field.

_Because I never want to be alone again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greek Mythology Notes:
> 
> \- The Titans were the divine beings who reigned before the gods. Their leader, Cronus, the titan of time and ages, ascended to power after he emasculated his father, Uranus, with a sickle his mother, Gaea, gave him. During his reign, a prophecy was foretold that one of his sons would dethrone him. So he began swallowing them whole after his wife, Rhea, gave birth to them. Tired of having her children gobbled up, Rhea gave Cronus a piece of swaddled stone instead of Zeus, and had the god grow up in an island away from his parents. Zeus eventually grew strong and rebelled against his father. He tricked him into regurgitating his brothers and sisters, and eventually, the Divine Wars between the gods and the titans began. The titans were defeated and imprisoned in Tartarus.
> 
> \- The cornucopia, or the horn of plenty, is Hades's symbol. (When I researched this, I was like, this is fate!) He was also called the god of wealth because he reigned over the underworld and it's where the precious metals and stones "came" from, beneath the earth.
> 
> If you had been wondering who the gods are in relation to the HG characters, here they are so far, though some have still yet to make an appearance. Again, the titles are my inventions based on the Homeric Hymns. See if you'd guessed them right:
> 
> God of the dead, host of the many: Hades - Peeta
> 
> God of the sky, the supreme deity: Zeus - Gale
> 
> God of the sea, heir of the trident: Poseidon – Finnick
> 
> God of the harvest, bringer of abundance: Demeter - Mr. Everdeen
> 
> The messenger, the herald of the gods: Hermes - Cato
> 
> Goddess of the hunt and wilderness, protectress of maidens: Artemis – Cashmere
> 
> God of light, bearer of prophecy: Apollo - Gloss
> 
> Goddess of love, pursuer of passion: Aphrodite - Effie
> 
> Goddess of marriage, lady of the sky: Hera - Johanna
> 
> God of wine, patron of ecstacy: Dionysius - Plutarch
> 
> Goddess of wisdom, fount of strategy: Athena - Madge
> 
> God of war, master of battles: Ares - Seneca
> 
> God of fire, armorer of immortals: Hephaistos - Haymitch


End file.
